I have a message from another time...
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
- SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 3 -
Third Movement: Valiant Rose
Benjamin D. Hutchins
with Kris Overstreet
(c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
High above the parched floor of Muroc Dry Lake in the high
desert of California, the Boeing B-29 growled along at cruising speed,
its four massive props chewing the cold, dry air. Up in the glazed
nose, a slightly built figure in drab Army-green pants and a well-worn
brown leather bomber jacket crouched behind the throttles, one hand on
the shoulder of the man in the right-hand seat, looking out at the
thin desert clouds.
That man finished going over a checklist on a clipboard, stuck
it in a pocket next to his seat, and then turned to the figure in the
bomber jacket and grinned.
"Ready?" asked Corwin Ravenhair.
Kozue Kaoru nodded firmly. "You bet!" she replied.
As she climbed down from the little elevator platform into the
small orange craft nestled into the belly of the big silver bomber,
Kozue wondered why Corwin thought it was important that she visit this
spot in history. She'd heard from Utena about the simulation the two
of them had run at the beginning of -her- space training, the year
before, and Kozue thought she understood the message in reliving one
of Corwin's father's people's first fumbling efforts to reach the
stars... but this wasn't a spacecraft she was climbing into.
Hell, it wasn't even a particularly sophisticated aircraft.
It didn't have a canopy - just a side door, not even attached to the
ship, which Corwin was now lowering into position on a couple of
chains. Kozue reached for the latching handle to lock it into place
as it was snugged up into the doorway to her right, then smiled.
Might as well do it right, she thought, and wedged the end of the
short length of wooden rod she'd found on the seat into the handle,
using the wood as a lever to ram the locking mechanism home.
Just as she'd been taught in the pre-simulation training, she
strapped herself in, connected the wire from her leather flying helmet
to the craft's communications system, flipped her goggles into position,
hooked up her oxygen mask and adjusted it over her nose and mouth, then
settled back and waited, alone with the drone of the mothership's props.
"Ready?" said Corwin's voice in her headset.
"Whenever you are," Kozue replied.
"OK. Prepare for drop in ten... nine... eight... seven...
six... five... four... three... two... one... drop!"
There was a CLUNK from above, a slight jolt, and then a
peculiar, weightless sensation. Sunlight flooded the little cabin as
the tiny orange bullet dropped from under the B-29's shadow into the
open air of the high desert. The bomber's drone vanished, leaving
Kozue riding along in a whispery silence. There was almost no
sensation of movement at all, except for the odd feeling of the silver
bomber getting smaller and pulling ahead as her little craft glided
behind.
"You're away," came Corwin's voice; then, in a tone so
familiar she could see the grin on his face, he added, "Go to work!"
Kozue let go of the control yoke with her right hand and
reached to the instrument panel. It was such a primitive setup
compared to what she was used to, the ultramodern control station of
the International Police Starship Valiant. It had no multifunction
displays, no programmable controls, no electronics worthy of the
name. The controls, yoke and pedals, weren't that different from
those of the Valiant, but what few status displays there were took the
form of simple analog gauges, each indicating a single thing: fuel
pressure, altitude, airspeed. There weren't even any throttles, just
a row of four toggle switches.
It was to these switches Kozue reached; after a moment's
pause, she put the fingertips of her right hand under them, firmed up
her grip on the yoke with her left hand, and pushed them all
simultaneously up.
WHAM! The seatback came up to belt her in the back, almost
taking the breath out of her, and the stillness of the cabin was torn
away by the screeching roar of a four-chamber rocket motor. The B-29
vanished behind her as she pulled gently back on the yoke and sent the
X-1 climbing toward the California sky.
The date was October 14, 1947, and Kozue Kaoru was on her way
to Mach 1.
Falling away from the backslapping, the cheers, and the hot
desert sun, Kozue came back to herself in an armchair in the quarters
of the Valiant's chief engineer. That very engineer, Corwin
Ravenhair, was on the edge of his bunk, peeling simsense electrodes
from his forehead; Captain Utena Tenjou, who had flown left seat in
the B-29, was doing the same at the cabin's small desk, where sat the
interface deck that had just switched off at the end of its program.
"... Wow," said Kozue, shaking her head slightly to clear out
the little bit of transition fog that clouded it.
"How was it?" asked Corwin with a slight twinkle in his eye.
"Unbelievable," Kozue replied. "But," she added with a faint
air of contrition, "I'm not sure I really understand what the point
was. I mean, I get the historical significance to your dad's people,
right, and I understand how primitive the technology was... but I'm
not sure what I was supposed to learn." She smiled and added with a
sparkle of her own, "It sure was fun, though."
Utena laughed and got up from the desk, coiling up the leads
to her electrode set. "That was pretty much the point," she said.
"You have a different approach to things than I did, so Corwin thought
we should do something different to start you off than he did for me,
and I figured, well, why not?"
"In your case it wasn't a lesson so much as a test," Corwin
added. He got up from his bunk, wound up his own leads and put them
on the desk next to the deck. "The X-1 wasn't a forgiving airplane,
especially at the transonic threshold. I wanted to see how well you'd
handle it."
"And?" asked Kozue, arching an eyebrow. "Did I pass?"
"You didn't auger it in," said Utena with a grin.
Corwin nodded. "Listen, don't let this go to your head, all
right, but you know how you keep saying that Miki's the prodigy in
your family? I think maybe you just hadn't found the vector for your
own genius yet."
Kozue blinked, surprised and pleased, a faint blush making
its way across the bridge of her nose. "Oh, c'mon. You're just
saying that."
But the young god shook his head firmly. "Did Zed Cochrane
show you the helm logs from our little chase with the Amar?"
"Sure. He even gave me a copy," said Kozue, "burned onto one
of those little keychain isorods like Utena has."
Corwin smiled. "That figures. You know why he did that?"
"He said I could get free drinks with it," Kozue replied,
grinning, "but I'm not sure what he meant."
"It's proof that you did what you did - that warp-speed manual
spiral. You know how many helmsmen can do stuff like that? Counting
you, four, and two of them are dead. Nobody's ever done it anywhere
near that fast, either. The previous record for a warp-speed manual
tactical maneuver was Warp Factor 11.92." Corwin pointed a finger in
an almost accusatory, vaguely intimidating manner at her chest and
continued, his face completely serious, "You are a genuine prodigy."
Kozue gave him a skeptical look. "C'mon. What're you
buttering me up for? I already told you once, you just have to ask."
That had its desired effect, turning Corwin's face a very
entertaining shade of red and making him sputter. Utena looked from
one to the other, her expression one of bafflement, for a moment, then
burst out laughing.
"OK," she said, spreading her hands, once she'd gotten herself
back under control. She stretched her back, hands behind head, elbows
high, and added, "That was more information than -I- needed. I think
I'll just go back to the bridge and see what Klaang's up to."
"It's not - I wa - she - look'a the BONES!" said Corwin,
making a slashing gesture with one hand in mock frustration. He
pushed a hand through his jagged black thatch of hair, shook a finger
at his pupil in admonishment, and said, "You're incorrigible."
Kozue grinned. "I hope so," she told him, and sauntered out
of his quarters with a slight, affected swagger in her step. Corwin
chuckled, squared away the deck, and then left as well, heading back
to his office overlooking the engine room.
The Valiant's summer tour was, after the slight initial hitch
caused by the attack of the rogue Klingon cruiser Amar, getting off
to a good smooth start. One unexpected benefit of the clash with the
Klingons was the extra publicity the incident's press coverage had
given the tour. The Art of Noise were finding their shows sold out
even in odd places like Kane's World, where they were virtual unknowns
despite the fact that their drummer, R. Dorothy Wayneright, was a
native of sorts, built and raised in New Gotham City.
Dorothy was slightly dubious about returning to New Gotham,
but the show must go on, so she swallowed her reservations and went.
It turned out to be a terrific show, played to a great crowd at a
downtown basement nightclub called, in self-conscious reference to New
Gotham's most enduring urban legend, the Bat Cave. Ship and band both
received warm welcomes (and more press) at each stop on the tour.
Everything was going very well - so well it was starting to make some
of the ship's company a bit nervous.
Not the captain, though; buoyed by her crew's success in their
first engagement, she looked forward to a safe and productive journey,
commanding her ship with a smooth imperturbability that gave the rest
of the crew and passengers a boost to their own confidence.
Everything, it seemed, was running according to plan.
INTERNATIONAL POLICE SPACE FORCE
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
FROM: CPT Utena Tenjou IPSFR cmdg.
IPS Valiant NX-06041
TO: FCPT Benjamin D. Hutchins IPSF cmdg.
IPS Challenger NX-04462
DATE: Wednesday, June 28, 2406
SUBJECT: Status update
Dear Dad -
As usual (knock on wood), everything's going great. The only
complaints this week are from Zed Cochrane and his team - they've got
nothing to do. The ship isn't obliging them by breaking down the way
new ships are supposed to. Cochrane says he blames Corwin, but Corwin
swears he hasn't cheated and done anything a normal human engineer
wouldn't do.
Corwin's birthday party went off just as planned - Kozue had managed
to convince him that we'd all just completely forgotten about his
birthday until after their stellar cartography session. It was a
blast, you should've been there - after the party we spent the
afternoon playing boarding drills with ten-man teams, each side with a
telepath coordinator. We had to make a house rule that Amanda and
Rina couldn't be on Devlin's team, though, because the three of them
working together didn't need the other seven and it was just a
complete slaughter. It's a little creepy sometimes, the way those
three interact (especially since, with Devlin still in school and
Amanda stationed at B6, they don't get to spend all that much time
together), but they seem really happy.
Next stop, Jyurai, where the Rune Knights, Nall, the Utonium sisters
and Achika will catch a transport back to New Avalon and we'll leave
Devlin back at the Psi Academy. Making this leg of the trip with the
Lorica has been interesting - we've run a couple of cloaked-ship games
and come out more or less even. Those Romulans Amanda has working for
her are -good-, but their helmsman just about worships Kozue after
hearing about the trick she pulled on the Klingons during our scrap
with the Amar, so it all evens out. :)
Her training's going well - she has to work at the bookish parts, like
the navigation and procedural things, but the actual flying is just
unconscious, and she's coming along really well at crisis management.
Corwin figures she'll be ready to stand the exam right around the
second or third week in August, maybe while we're doing our four-day
mini-tour of Bodacious Vee.
Like the song says, that's all I can think of but I'm sure there's
something else. Oh well - if I think of it I'll file an amendment.
Love from the whole gang, and Kate says to remind you that she's
expecting you to show up for the Tomodachi show next Tuesday.
Oh, check that - Klaang says he's sorry but he doesn't love you, only
harbors a deep and profound respect for you.
Zed Cochrane, on the other hand, says his love for you goes without
saying, which, to be honest, is exactly the way I'd rather he left
it. Anyway, take it easy. I'm closing this file before anybody else
does anything weird.
- UT
END OF TRANSMISSION
The recipient of this message, better known to friends and
enemies as Gryphon, chuckled and dropped the report into the
appropriate folder, then sat back, put his feet up on his desk, and
scanned his surroundings for signs of any more creeping work. He
didn't see any, but just to be certain he thumbed the intercom panel
in the corner of the desk.
"Ruri?"
"Yes."
"Have I got any more work to do?"
"Not right now."
"Oh. None at all?"
"No."
"Wow. Well, OK, then. I guess I'll be playing 'JC Denton
Illuminates the Romulan Empire' again if anybody needs me."
Just before he switched the intercom off, Gryphon was
forestalled by Ruri's voice saying, "Sir... "
The IPO chief blinked. Ruri almost never called him 'sir'.
"Yes?" he said.
"Since you have a moment, there's something I'd like to talk
to you about."
"Uh... sure. C'mon in."
The channel clicked shut. Gryphon sat up, putting his feet
back on the floor, and looked mildly puzzled and mildly concerned as
the door to his office from the bridge opened and his diminuitive
yeoman entered. Instead of looking bored, as Ruri Hoshino normally
did, she looked slightly troubled about something.
"What's on your mind?" asked Gryphon as the door swished shut
behind her.
Rather than replying directly, Ruri stood looking at him for a
moment, then said softly, "I've been with you for a long time now,
haven't I?"
Gryphon nodded. "Fifteen years. Ever since I first started
putting together the IPO."
"Have I ever given you any reason to be dissatisfied with my
performance?"
"No, not at all," said Gryphon, surprised. "You've been
indispensible. I couldn't have made the Organization work without
you." He looked worried. "Did I give you that impression? I'm sorry
if I did - I've tried to - "
Ruri shook her head. "No. I was just making sure... " She
paused, seeming for once to be at a loss for words rather than just
lacking interest in saying anything, then took a breath and said,
"Captain Tachibana has offered me the helmsman's job on Steamrunner."
"Oh," said Gryphon. "What'd you tell her?"
"I haven't told her anything yet, except that I wanted to
speak to you about it first."
"Oh. Well, is it something you're interested in doing?"
"Yes," Ruri replied, "it is... but... there's my work here to
consider. If you don't want me to go, then I'll stay here."
Gryphon thought about that for a moment, then said, "If you
want to take Maria's offer, then I think you should. Fifteen years is
a long time to do the same job, and if you think you're ready to move
on, then I won't stop you - on one condition," he added, raising a
finger.
"What's that?" asked Ruri, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"Before you go," said Gryphon with a grin, "you have to find
someone who can replace you. I can't get anything done around here
without -someone- to think for me."
"Actually," said Ruri, "I've got someone in mind already.
She's green - just out of the Academy - but I think I can train her."
The little Lensman's mouth quirked into a very slight, sardonic smile
as she added, "She's certainly a hard enough worker... "
Gryphon nodded. "As you see fit - you've always had a free
hand, that's certainly not going to stop now." He smiled. "And I
think Maria's made a good choice."
A trace of color came into Ruri's cheeks; she glanced at the
floor. "Thank you, sir," she said. "I'll... I'll just go and get
started on the paperwork for my replacement, then."
Gryphon nodded again, briskly this time, and said, "Carry on.
Oh - and while you're at it, draw yourself up a promotion to lieutenant
commander for my signature." He winked. "Can't have a junior officer
at the helm of one of our new ships, can we?"
"I don't see why not," replied Ruri mock-grumpily as she
left. "Valiant's helmsman is a -civilian-... "
Gryphon watched the door shut behind her, shook his head with
a fond chuckle, and keyed on his dataterm again. It'd be weird not
having her around after all this time...
The morning - well, early afternoon, really - after the
resoundingly successful New Japan show (performed before the Art's
biggest crowd ever, 10,000 people packed into the Romanova Memorial
Amphitheatre on the campus of the Stingray Institute), Imra Ardeen
entered the Valiant's lunchroom to find Wakaba Shinohara sitting with
her feet up on one of the tables, munching on nachos and reading a
brightly colored magazine. She looked up as the blonde telepath
entered, grinned, and put her feet and the front legs of her chair
back on the floor.
"Morning, Imra," she said. "Just getting up?"
Imra nodded with a sheepish grin. "I -did- get to bed at
3:30," she replied.
"Quite a party after the show, huh? Saionji dragged his butt
to bed around the same time. He said I'd missed a good time, but I
was so tired from all that sparring, I just wanted to sleep. I don't
know where Kaitlyn gets her energy."
Imra got herself a drink and a zap-pack from the automat - the
captain might be willing to cook the ship's company's meals, but only
at regular times, and the AEGIS op had missed lunch - then sat down
opposite Wakaba to eat it.
"It certainly was a good time," she replied, "and as for
Kate's energy, I'm sure I don't know," she added with a smile. "I
could speculate, but... " She looked curiously at the magazine Wakaba
had put down next to her tray. "What are you reading?"
"Comic book," Wakaba replied, holding the magazine up and
turning it so Imra could see the cover. It was one of the products of
the Bacon Comics Group, part of BaconMedia, the multimedia corporation
run by longtime Wedge Defense Force morale officer and present Babylon
Station commander Derek Bacon. The flag proudly declared it to be
issue 298 of "TOP THRILLS COMICS featuring THE SCARLET SENTINEL and
ARSENAL".
The illustration below featured a rather stocky man in a
double-breasted red cavalry jacket with a stylized metallic 's' logo
on the flap, black pants, a red-lined black cloak, and a black domino
mask. On his left hand, what appeared to be a ring was emitting a
beam of red energy which was forming a plasma-shield-like barrier in
front of him, deflecting a disruptor beam being directed at him by an
angry-looking Cardassian soldier. An explosion graphic in the corner
informed the reader that this issue was part four of "The Cardassian
Caper!"
"The... Scarlet Sentinel," said Imra, who had never had much
time in her busy, academically meteoric life for comics.
"Yeah," said Wakaba, nodding. "And Arsenal. She's really
cool, but she's not in this one - she got captured by the Cardies last
issue and this one's all the Sentinel trying to find her. I think
they're building up to something really big for issue 300 in a couple
of months. Derek better not kill her off - if he does, I'm going to
get Utena to drop me off at B6 so I can personally kick his butt. I
don't think he will, though. I think maybe he's building up to having
SS finally admit he's interested in her as more than just a sidekick,"
she added with a sly wag of her eyebrows. "After all, she's all grown
up now... "
"Captain Bacon writes this book himself?"
"Yup. It's the only BC title he still writes personally.
That's why it's so good," said Wakaba, perusing the last few pages of
the comic again. "Well, that and because the art's awesome. Moyer's
a -god-."
Imra took another look at the cover. "The Scarlet Sentinel
looks... familiar," she said.
"He should," Wakaba replied with a grin. "He's the Chief."
Imra blinked, looked more closely, then laughed. "Well, I'll
be - he -is- the Chief! What in... "
Wakaba's grin widened a little. "The way Derek tells it, a
long time ago - back during the days of the original WDF - someone
asked Gryphon what he'd like to be if he wasn't a Wedge Defender, and
he told them he wanted to be a superhero. Derek was just starting his
media company back then, and he ran with it. This is the new version,
started up after Gryphon was cleared and Derek relaunched BaconMedia.
The original ones are almost impossible to find - a lot of people
destroyed them after Sonset, and the rest are being hoarded by
collectors."
"I didn't know you were interested in comic books," said Imra.
"Hey, I had to have -something- to do that first term I was in
Midgard. Sitting around Saionji's room all day just didn't do it for
me. I don't know how he kept from going crazy when he was staying in
-my- room with nothing to do all day." She paused, eyes widening, put
a fingertip to her lips, then said, "Oh wait... he didn't. Never
mind!"
The two girls giggled for a moment over Wakaba's joke; then
Imra thumbed through the comic and asked, "How many of these do you
have?"
"Of Top Thrills? Individual issues back to 251 and the trade
paperbacks all the way to the beginning. It's my favorite book. Why,
you want to borrow them?"
"I think I might," said Imra, nodding, "if you don't mind."
"Not at all," said Wakaba, grinning. "Always happy to spread
the Scarlet Word. 'I challenge all things dark and fell, I'm Evil's
bane and Crime's death-knell. I fight for Truth and Right as well: I
am the Scarlet Sentinel!'" She giggled. "Hey, if you like them,
write Derek a letter. Maybe he'll make you a character too. You
could be Cissie's new rival. 'Make Way for Saturn Girl!'"
Imra rolled her eyes. "Don't be a weirdo, Wakaba."
Early July found the Valiant beginning her great sweep through
the Rigel sector, hitting various and sundry of the old United
Galactica's core systems on their way to the new seat of galactic
power, the Centauri sector and Earth. In the early afternoon of the
month's first Wednesday, while the ship orbited New Caledonia, Janice
Barlow put her head into the chief engineer's office to notify him of
a minor glitch in the target projection system of the ship's
semi-holographic shooting range.
Corwin was sitting at his desk with one foot against the edge
of the desktop, a large sketch pad propped up on his knee. He had a
black Sharpie marker in his left hand and a look of deep concentration
on his face. On the desk in front of him, a glowing green gemstone
about the size of a hockey puck hovered above a repulsor pad, humming
with a quiet, musical tone and giving everything in the small,
cluttered office a faint emerald tint.
"Working on something?" asked Janice.
Corwin blinked, look up, and smiled, faintly distractedly.
"Oh, hi, Janice. C'mon in. I'm just fooling around with a possible
use for this stuff," he said, aiming a thumb at the green gem.
"Pretty," she said, crossing the threshold. "What is it?"
"It's called gaolith," Corwin replied. "It's a mystic
gemstone, occurs naturally in a place called Cephiro. I was fooling
around with this piece - " (here Corwin flicked a finger against the
gem, making it spin in the levi-field and hum at a different, higher
pitch) " - when I realized that I'd seen the energy it emits before."
Janice sat down on the corner of his desk. "Oh yeah? Where?"
"Your weapon, among other places."
"I thought the color looked familiar," said the redheaded
security officer, nodding. "It's producing Photon rays?"
"Mm. 'Course, you Ragolians are the only ones that call it
that," he added, grinning. "Everywhere else in the galaxy, it goes by
a different name."
"Getter rays," said Janice, nodding. "I know. I dunno why
the early colonists called it 'Photon'. Ever since then their
descendents have been wishing they hadn't, but what can you do." She
came into the office and looked a little more closely at the gem. "So
this thing naturally produces Getter rays?"
"Mm-hmm, and lots of them. The bigger the crystal, the bigger
the output. I'm still trying to figure the scale - it's not linear -
but there's a definite relationship."
"Hmm." Janice tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I'm not a
Photon scientist, mind you, I just use the stuff, but one of the
things you learn early on Ragol is that there's an upper limit to
Photon tech's usefulness. Make a Photon cell much bigger than the
ones that power our heavy hand weapons, or a Photon collector much
bigger than one that can charge those cells, and you're buying a heap
of trouble. The first generation of colonists, when they discovered
how rich Ragol's magnetisphere is in Photon rays, built a collector
big enough to power the capital city and more besides. They thought
they'd found an unlimited supply of free energy."
Corwin nodded. "And instead they blew a crater the size of
Avalon County in the northern hemisphere and mutated all the
indigenous lifeforms into vicious monsters. I read about that last
night while I was researching Getter technology. Anyway," he added,
pinging the gaolith crystal again, "if my calculations are right,
G-stone doesn't have that limitation. It's stable however big the
generator crystal is, as long as you make sure you get one without
critical flaws. Powering a city with it isn't really practical, I
don't think, but you could run a good-sized battle mecha with it."
Janice leaned over and looked at the sketches he'd drawn on
the notepad. "'Getter Robo', huh?"
"Just a concept that came to me in the shower this morning,"
said Corwin offhandedly. He capped the marker and tossed it and the
pad on his desk. "It's totally impractical, though. Probably never
get built. Still, the power calculations are interesting, and I'll
probably be able to turn it to some more practical purpose in the long
run. Anyway, did you need something?"
"Oh, I just wanted to let you know that one of the projector
heads in the target range is a little glitchy. Probably just needs a
new red element."
"Oh. OK, I'll check it out." Corwin got up, took the G-stone
out of the levi-field, and pocketed it.
"Awright. Take it easy," said Janice, and she moved off down
the corridor with her faithful Mag floating along behind.
Corwin got halfway to the target range before being
intercepted by Wakaba Shinohara, who wanted to know if he felt like
heading dirtside with a group of the others for some sightseeing. He
said sure, if they could wait until he'd dealt with the holoemitter,
and with that minor job taken care of, they headed down. Not for the
first time, he thanked his father and the others who had developed the
Defiant class for blessing him with such a well-behaved charge.
FRIDAY, JULY 21, 2406
CENTAURI SECTOR, EARTH ALLIANCE
UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
Anthy Tenjou pushed her chair back from her desk, rubbed her
eyes, and forced herself to admit that she was becoming a little bit
worried.
Her studies for the placement test she would have to take at
summer's end - the all-important test which determined whether she
would place into the Class of 2407 at the Deedlit Satori Mandeville
Memorial Institute or, failing that, disrupt the lives of her husband
and many of their friends - were going slowly and arduously but, on
the whole, well. She had no cause for dissatisfaction.
Oh, the work was hard, no doubt about that. She had never had
any cause to take her education seriously in her previous life, and so
was starting basically from nothing and attempting to qualify for the
senior class at one of the galaxy's best secondary schools, not a
trivial task by any stretch of the imagination.
She had a lot of friends to help her if she needed it, though,
and with the expert tutelage of Miki Kaoru and the loving support of
the rest of the Institute Duelists and their closest friends, Anthy
was confident that she could pass and all would be well...
... but nevertheless, she was becoming a little bit worried.
For it seemed that every time she sat down to do some serious
studying, which was almost every day and usually more than once per
day, she developed a headache. Early on they'd been mild, more
annoying than anything else, but lately they'd been growing worse, and
now the pain behind her eyes was downright fierce. Anthy was
accustomed to discomfort, having endured much more than her fair share
of it in her life, but there were limits - not to how much she could
stand, but to how long she would endure before wondering if there
might be something seriously wrong.
At first she'd attributed them to stress. It was a lot of
information for her brain to absorb, after all, and hers was a brain
unaccustomed to absorbing much of anything, thanks to the sort of life
she had been leading up until this spring. As the summer went on,
though, she grew less and less convinced of that theory's rightness.
They seemed too consistent for that, and though challenging, the
studying wasn't necessarily stressful. If not that, though - what?
Sighing, she got up, absently picking up the book she was
reading and putting a finger in it to save her place. She left the
captain's cabin and went up the main corridor, around the bridge and
to the stateroom of Kaitlyn Hutchins. It was evening cycle on the
Valiant, nominal offtime for most of the crew, but with their entry
into the Earth Alliance, Corwin Ravenhair was staying below to keep an
eye on his engines and Utena was still on the bridge, making certain
their IPO entry clearances and orbit arrangements for Earth were taken
care of double-sure.
The door slid open when Anthy pressed the call button - Kate
had it set to open in lieu of chiming. Kate was sitting on her bunk
with her black Stratocaster guitar slung on, noodling about with a bit
of a Bo Diddley beat; she looked up, mildly surprised that her visitor
was Anthy and not, as she had guessed, Juri.
"E-evening, Anthy," she said; then she took the guitar off,
put it down on her bunk, and cocked her head thoughtfully. "Y-you
d-don't look so g-good."
Anthy smiled wanly. "Does it show that much? I have a
headache," she said. "Quite a bad one tonight."
Kate frowned sympathetically, got up, and headed for the door
to her cabin's small bathroom. "D-do you w-want something f-for it?
I've g-got T-Tylenol, I think... "
"That would be nice," said Anthy, nodding. "I think we've run
out... but mainly I came to get away from studying for a while."
Kate leaned back out of the bathroom, gestured to the book
Anthy was holding, and said with a smile, "That m-might've worked
b-b-better if you hadn't b-brought it w-with you."
Anthy looked at the book, only now realizing she was holding
it, and tsk'd at herself. "It might, mightn't it," she agreed. She
went to Kate's desk, found a sheet of scrap paper, marked her place
and put the book aside.
Kate came out of her bathroom again, two red and white
capsules in hand, and fetched her guest a bottle of water from the
little refrigerator built into the corner of the room. "Th-there you
go," she said, handing the objects over. "I kn-know a f-f-few
acup-practic tech-ch-techniques, too, if you w-w-want. P-part of my
K-Katsujinkenr-r-ryuu t-training."
"Well... if you don't mind," Anthy agreed. She swallowed the
Tylenol with a gulp of water and added, "I don't want to interrupt
whatever you were doing."
"I was j-just f-f-fooling around with an old G-George
Thorog-good song," Kate replied with a dismissive gesture. "B-but old
Three-k-k-Chord G-G-George isn't exactly ch-challenging to c-cover."
Kate ushered Anthy to a sitting position at the end of the bunk,
climbed up into seiza behind her, cracked her knuckles, and set to
work. "We'll j-j-just th-throw in a little of this w-while we
w-w-wait for the T-Tylenol to k-k-kick in," she said.
"Mmm," replied Anthy, closing her eyes. "That's marvelous.
Thank you. I feel better already."
"Any id-d-dea what b-rought it on?" Kate wondered as she
worked, her fingers plying Anthy's temples as the balls of her thumbs
pressed against the back of the darker girl's head.
"No, not really," Anthy replied. "They seem to come on
whenever I'm studying... and they've been getting worse as the
summer's gone on. I haven't wanted to worry Utena, but... I'm
starting to get a little worried myself."
"M-maybe you should see D-Doctor Phlox," Kate suggested.
"Well... I've thought about it... but as I said, I don't want
to worry Utena, and... well, she's the captain. Surely if I went to
Phlox he'd have to report it to her."
"Hmmmm," said Kate thoughtfully. "W-when you're s-s-studying... "
Kaitlyn went on working until Anthy had nearly fallen asleep,
then asked, "How's th-that?"
"Wonderful," Anthy replied. "It's completely gone. Thank
you."
"I d-don't know how much c-c-credit I can c-claim," Kate
replied with a smile, "b-but you're w-welcome."
Anthy regarded her history book, sitting on Kate's desk, and
sighed. "I suppose I should get back to work."
"You c-can s-s-stay here if you l-like," Kate offered.
"Juri's p-playing chess w-w-with Imra ton-night."
Anthy arched an eyebrow. "Chess with a telepath?"
"She s-swears she d-d-doesn't ch-cheat," Kate said. "Anyway,
J-Juri sees it as a ch-challenge."
Anthy chuckled. "She would," she observed. "All right...
thank you. I -was- getting a bit lonely just reading by myself."
"No p-problem," said Kate. She moved her guitar out of the
way, sat back against her pillows, and propped her musical notebook on
her knees, but she didn't start writing in it right away; instead she
watched quietly as Anthy sat at the desk, opened her history text and
went back to reading. She had a good view of the darker girl's
profile from that vantage point, and what she saw confirmed her
suspicions.
"Mm-hmm," she said.
"Pardon?" said Anthy, looking up.
Kate got up from her bed, crossed to the desk, and said, "I
thought your d-description sounded f-f-f-familiar." Then she removed
her large round spectacles and said, "T-try these."
Anthy looked at her, puzzled. "I never needed my glasses,"
she said. "They were just - "
Kate nodded. "I kn-know, but t-t-try them anyway. H-humor
me."
Looking dubious, Anthy took the glasses and regarded them for
a moment. Then she shrugged inwardly - what the hell, it wasn't as
though -Kaitlyn- were attempting to symbolically declare some sort of
dominance over her - put them on, and went back to reading.
She was immediately struck by how much clearer the type was.
She'd never really noticed it before, but now, if she pulled the
lenses down her nose a bit and looked over them at the page,
everything was all... fuzzy. She had to squint a little to read the
text, causing that familiar thread of pain to whisper into existence
across her forehead, the faint beginnings of that tension behind her
eyes. But push them up again, look through them - gone. All of it
gone, and the page... well, it still wasn't quite perfect, but it was
certainly much more readable.
She took the glasses off again and regarded their owner with
astonishment.
"Kaitlyn," she said, "are you trying to tell me... "
Kate nodded, unable to quite keep a smile off her face.
A sort of horrified amusement creeping onto her face and
mixing with the astonishment, Anthy went on with a slight tremor in
her voice, "... that I actually -need-... "
Kate nodded again, a faint quiver beginning in her shoulders.
"... GLASSES?!" concluded Anthy, and with the last syllable
she exploded into laughter, taking Kaitlyn right along with her.
The two girls laughed until they wept, shattered by the cosmic
irony of it all. When they'd recovered and dried their eyes, Kate
said with a wry grin,
"M-maybe it's t-time to see D-Doctor Phlox after all?"
Utena Tenjou, Captain, IPO Space Force Reserve, sat in her
center seat on the bridge of the Valiant and looked over the checklist
one more time. Everything seemed to be in order. It had seemed to be
in order three hours ago when she'd started checking it all for the
third time, and it was in order now. She was almost convinced by now
that it wouldn't somehow drift out of order while she wasn't looking
if she went to bed.
At the science station, where he'd remained despite lacking
much to do out of sheer solidarity with his commander, Sub-Commander
Klaang tai-Kalaan smiled slightly to himself. The vestai-Tenjou had
good reason to be nervous about tomorrow's destination; after all,
when she'd last left the planet Earth, it had been with a goodly part
of the Earth Alliance's law enforcement community on her tail, and
there was no doubt that the people she'd crossed to earn that farewell
remembered her.
Still, she was an International Police officer and a starship
commander, and for all its snap and bluster back in the late spring of
2405, the Earth Alliance was a signatory to the International Police
Accord. That meant they were obligated by international law to extend
visiting IPO personnel every courtesy, and that meant that if Utena
wanted to park her ship in Earth orbit and put down part of her crew
for shore leave, then that was precisely what Earth would let her do.
In fact, there seemed to be no hard feelings; the Earthdome
representatives with whom the Valiant's crew had worked to make all
the arrangements for their brief visit to Toronto had been quite
pleasant about the whole thing. That made Utena a little nervous too,
which Klaang noted as another indication that the vestai-Tenjou was a
warrior wise beyond her years. She wasn't taking anything for granted
going in there, even though the stop -was- the one she was looking
forward to most on all the tour.
"If the one may make a suggestion, joH'wI'," rumbled Klaang
quietly.
Utena blinked, looked up from her workpad display, and said,
"Yes, Klaang?"
"We will reach the Solar system at roughly noon New Avalon
time," the Klingon scientist pointed out. "That is nearly twelve
hours from now. There is plenty of time for you to get a good night's
sleep -and- re-check everything one more time after breakfast."
Utena grinned, then yawned and stretched one hand above her
head until the knot between her shoulder blades popped most
satisfactorily.
"So go the hell to bed, is what you're saying, basically," she
said.
Klaang nodded equably. "In essence, yes," he replied.
"Good idea." She turned to her lefthand command panel and
pressed a control on it, declaring, "Valiant command systems on
night-shift automatic." Then she rose, stretched again, and headed
for the portside corridor door before pausing and asking, "Are you
staying here?"
"For a while yet," Klaang replied. "Good night, Captain."
"Night, Klaang."
Smiling at the idea of being mothered by a three-hundred-fifty-
pound Klingon master-at-arms, Utena turned left out of the bridge and
walked the four steps to the door of the captain's cabin, the most
convenient to the bridge on the entire ship. The room was empty,
which wasn't all that odd - hers was a close-knit crew, and people
visited each other's quarters all the time. She could have tabbed the
intercom panel and done a transponder search - everybody on board wore
a little tag built into their ship's insignia pin that told the
computer where aboard the ship they were - but instead she decided to
try guessing where Anthy was.
Her first guess, the lunchroom, was wrong - there she found
only Juri Arisugawa and Imra Ardeen, engrossed in a game of chess, and
Sergei the tiger asleep at Juri's feet. Utena, who wasn't very good
at chess, couldn't tell from looking at the board who was winning, and
neither player seemed inclined to notice her presence, so she went
back out again without bothering them and tried her second guess.
The door to Kaitlyn's stateroom opened at once, revealing
mostly darkness. Kate could just be seen, curled up asleep in her
bed; the only light came from the little desk lamp, which fell on
Anthy's history book.
Hearing the door hiss open, Anthy turned. The desk lamp's
light glittered on...
... the lenses of her glasses. Not her old, big, clunky,
aviator-framed glasses from days gone by - these were slim oblongs
with silver rims, much more modern and sleek. They fitted her face a
great deal better, altering her appearance much less. In fact, rather
than detracting from her looks the way the old ones had, these
actually accented the lines of her face a little - but still...
Utena stopped in the doorway and blinked.
"Er," she said softly.
Anthy gave her a puzzled look. "What?"
A number of explanations passed through Utena's mind; since
she was tired, most of them were at least slightly alarming and all of
them were wrong.
"What happened?" Utena whispered intently, trying not to wake
Kate.
Anthy looked more puzzled still. "What?" she repeated; then it
dawned on her what was happening and she laughed lightly, reaching up
and removing her glasses. "Would you believe I'm farsighted?" she
asked softly.
Utena blinked again, then snickered, putting her hand across
her mouth. Anthy put her spectacles back on, got up, closed her book,
turned off the desk lamp, and went out into the hall, gently herding
Utena out before her; before the door closed behind her, she reached
back inside and switched it back to chime-for-entry mode.
Utena was still giggling when they reached the captain's
cabin. When the door closed behind them, she burst out laughing, then
said, "You're -joking-!"
Anthy shook her head, smiling wryly. "I'm afraid not," she
said. "Kaitlyn realized it was the reason I've been having headaches
while studying."
"You have? You didn't mention - "
"I know, I didn't want to bother you. I didn't think they
were anything significant - and I was right. It was just that...
well, after all that, I -do- need glasses after all."
"So you had Doctor Phlox make you a set?"
Anthy nodded. "He said there are other treatments available,
but I really only need them for reading. Kaitlyn's prescription and
mine are almost the same."
"But Kate wears her glasses all the time."
"It's easier than putting them on and taking them off all the
time. And it's a bit of an affectation," said Anthy. "Before long
she probably won't need them at all. Her father doesn't; his are
blank, like my old ones were. He only wears them because he doesn't
think he looks right without them."
"Really? I never knew that," said Utena, impressed. "Where
do you learn these things?"
"It's amazing what comes up in conversation while you're
waiting for glasses to be made," Anthy replied calmly. "You must be
tired," she went on, veering away from the subject. "How many times
did you re-check our documents?"
"Three," Utena replied. She went into the bathroom, brushed
her teeth, and changed for bed; then Anthy took her turn, and as they
put out the lights and got into the captain's double-wide bunk
together, Utena observed wryly,
"I had -just- gotten used to you -without- your glasses... "
"Perhaps I'll only wear them for reading," Anthy replied.
"They do look a lot better than your old ones, though," Utena
went on thoughtfully.
"Well," said Anthy without audible irony, "when you decide
on a preference, please let me know."
"Oh, quiet, you."
"As you wish, Lady Utena."
"... I can't win this one, can I?"
"No."
A soft chuckle. "I didn't think so. Good night, love. I'm
glad you're not having headaches any more."
"As am I, believe me. Good night... "
The concert at Sneaky Dee's was like a homecoming. The Art of
Noise had only played there twice before, but they had been big,
powerful, defining shows that helped to shape the band into what they
now were, even though two of their current lineup hadn't been part of
the group the last time they'd come. It was also a reunion, because
almost everyone turned up for it, friends they hadn't seen in over a
year, in some cases longer.
Joe Graf and his band, the Crush of Love, were all present.
Though the older, more established group, they'd insisted on being the
opening act; after all, as Joe pointed out, the Crush had never gone
on a galactic tour. Amanda Dessler, Crown Princess of the Gamilon
Empire and former Art of Noise rhythm guitarist, her bodyguard Rina
Dragonaar, and her fiance, former Art drummer Devlin Carter, all
appeared, making their second rendezvous with the Valiant Tour that
summer. And of course Dimitrios Arbuthnot ran the place, so he was
there behind the bar, just where he belonged. Even Roy Chernow, the
Maple Leafs fan who had taken it upon himself to explain the game of
ice hockey to Utena and Saionji one spring day in 2405, turned up,
much to their surprise and pleasure.
Kozue Kaoru and Mia Ausa were off to one side of the bar
during the first break, leaning against one of the tall tables meant
for standing patrons and chatting with Imra Ardeen about how well the
show was going and what a great room the band had to work tonight,
when a tallish man with long blue hair in a ponytail and a Network 23
shirt made his way through the crowd to their table.
"Dad!" said Mia, delightedly embracing her father. "Are you
here covering the show?"
"Nah," replied John Trussell offhandedly. "No camera, see?"
he added, holding up his empty hands. "I took the day off. Just came
over to see the show - and you, of course."
"Well, I'm glad you did," said Mia, smiling. Then, looking at
Kozue and Imra, she said, "I don't think you've met, have you? This
is my father, John Trussell. Dad, this is Kozue Kaoru, Miki's sister,
and Imra Ardeen, our AEGIS agent."
Imra smiled - as if anyone had to tell her who John Trussell
was! - and offered a gloved hand. This wasn't something she'd have
been inclined to do two months ago, but life as a member of the
Valiant's crew, with her crewmates' tendency to accept her as a
telepath the same offhanded way they accepted that, say, their
captain happened to have pink hair, had softened her reserve. Only
after offering the hand did she realize that the reporter might not be
too keen on shaking hands with a P12-rated AEGIS operative.
Truss didn't bat an eye, though, and his smile was warm as he
shook her hand and said he was glad to meet her.
"Hold on a minute," said a voice from the crowd behind Truss,
and then a redheaded young woman in jeans and a red t-shirt elbowed
her way through. She looked Kozue up and down and said, "-You're-
Kozue Kaoru?"
Kozue blinked. "Yeah, that's right. And you are?"
"Oh, Jung, you're here too?" said Mia.
"'Course I am," replied the redhead. "You don't think I'd let
your father fly -himself- from B6 to Earth, do you? He might get lost
and end up in the Romulan Neutral Zone or something."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Truss dryly. "This
is Jung Freud, my pilot."
"Uh... huh," said Kozue skeptically.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," replied Jung unconcernedly. "Are
you the same Kozue Kaoru who's helmsman on the Valiant?"
"Most of the time."
Jung grinned. "Then I want to buy you a drink. What're you
having?"
"Zed told you this would happen," said Mia with a smile.
"Uh, just water," Kozue replied. "Got to stay ready in case
anything goes down, you know."
"Bah," said Jung as the two of them made their way toward the
bar. "I always find that things go smoother with a little
lubrication. Anyway, nothing's going to happen. Trust me, I work for
a news agency, and this planet's deader than my Great-Aunt Harriet
tonight. Why do you think they let Bluehair take the day off?"
Gonzalo Salvador y Bautisto Krupp, also known as Carlos II,
Emperor of Argentina, Protector of Uruguay and Lord of the Patagonias,
watched the little viewscreen on his desk and fretted. Here in his
little office - not the huge, imposing one built for state affairs and
public speeches - he had run the military state that his uncle,
Emperor Carlos I, had founded in the aftermath of World War IV a
century and a half ago. The nation had been his for nearly a century,
and the youthful vigor he'd retained when crowned had faded into what
was politely called 'distinguished' old age. He would turn one
hundred fifty-six in October; he could hear the Reaper's tread behind
him, time slowly catching up with him.
And he hadn't conquered the world yet.
He didn't particularly -want- the entire world; just all of
South America and maybe a bit of the Central American isthmus as well,
and maybe the Caribbean Islands as loose change. Unfortunately, in
order to get those he'd have to go over Earthdome's collective dead
body, and if you're going to have to take the entire planet anyway,
why not keep it?
He'd thought he'd had a chance, back in 2388, when the War of
Corporate Occupation came to Earth and the GENOM forces occupied the
planet. Argentina had been able to secure its own borders and
airspace and, had the war gone on another month, it would have been
able to add Paraguay, Bolivia and maybe the rump of Chile to its
territory. Unfortunately, GENOM had thrown in the towel, the
Federation had sent in peacekeepers, and the Argentine Empire ended up
with nothing.
So he'd built, and he'd trained, and he'd planned, waiting for
the time when the small, elite Argentine armed forces could overwhelm
the various Earth government forces in one swift, stunning campaign.
Through the 2390s it had seemed to be working. Then, little by
little, the interplanetary Earth Alliance had matched and then
outstripped his own military buildup. It had built a starfleet
substantial enough to make the Empire's secret space navy trivial. It
had forced him to look for even more deadly technology to offset the
now-insuperable gulf between Earthforce and the Imperial Army.
And that had brought in the weapons inspectors. Carlos and
his ministers had led the Federation inspectors a merry dance,
insuring they saw only what Carlos wanted seen... and then the IPO
agents had joined the teams, and the dance became even more difficult.
The last steps were playing out on his viewscreen now, as one
particularly annoying IPO agent was demanding entrance to the base
where the Empire had stored its greatest, most potent - and most
illegal - military equipment. For the moment, the agent was stalled
by red tape... but the delays could only work for so long.
What was worse, the agent already knew what was in the base's
armories. Why else would one of the IPO's precious few warships come
to Earth? Oh, the pretty fairy-story of a rock band on galactic tour
didn't fool Carlos for one moment; once the agent had proof, the IPO's
troopers would come in and take Carlos off to face trial for
violations of the Babel weapons accords.
Carlos' choices were coming down to three, and only three. He
could let the IPO agent in and try to fight conviction in the
Federation courts. (Ha.) He could destroy the offending weapons and
give up any hope of conquering the Earth, or even South America, while
he lived. (Ha, ha.) The only other option was to strike - attempt to
take out Earthdome with a surprise blow, as per the many war plans he
and his generals had crafted.
They were not ready. The Imperial Space Navy was hidden at a
base on the asteroid Chiron: an antiquated force of rebuilt pirate
ships and obsolete war-surplus starships. Only one of the Empire's
ten divisions was armored with the power suits which the plans relied
on for victory; the others were either in off-the-shelf armor or had
no armor at all. The twelve squadrons of aerospace fighters the
Empire had were, put kindly, substandard; aging Rapiers, early-model
Dragonflies surpassed by their current kin, and a single squadron of
outdated Valkyries, scavenged at excessive cost from various places.
Nor could they count on allies. Carlos had some offworld
support, but they refused to do anything that would reveal their
existence or identity. Those few Federation members with diplomatic
ties to Argentina - such as the Freespacers, who kept an ambassador in
Buenos Aires to thumb their nose at Earthdome - would never support an
agressive war. As for the other two nations on Earth not part of the
Alliance, Texas was too isolationist to want to take up arms against
Earthdome, and Zanzibar had no military to speak of - just a single
customs cutter in orbit and a small guard for the Prince and his
family.
In short, if Argentina attacked it would be alone and at a
serious disadvantage... but if it didn't, Carlos' dreams of ruling
Earth would be forever thwarted. Put in that light, the decision
wasn't hard to make.
Carlos switched his desk comm from the security-camera view of
the weapons inspectors to the desk of his senior general. "Quevada,"
he said quietly, "I want Case Zulu underway within the hour. Our
strike forces must hit Geneva at dawn."
General Quevada looked faintly puzzled, but agreeable to the
idea. "And the IPO agent?"
"Kill him."
Quevada, having gained his position by loyalty more than
through any other qualification, made no protest at this sudden
decision. "As my Emperor commands," he said, and cut the channel.
Carlos II, Emperor of Argentina, watched the murder of the
International Police man on his viewscreen, then leaned back in his
worn, comfortable chair and sighed, feeling every day of his many
years. All I wanted, he thought, was beachfront property in Acapulco.
Was that so much to ask?
A telephone rang, shrilly, insistently. It sliced through the
fabric of its owner's dreams, rending them and casting them aside. A
few seconds before she would have been given the Carter Award for
Outstanding Investigative Journalism, Nanami Jinnai awoke - very, very
grudgingly.
For a few seconds, she didn't know where she was; her tiny
apartment in the Montparnasse district of Paris was still unfamiliar
to her. She'd only been working out of ISN's headquarters bureau for
a little less than a month. Instinctively, she reached for the phone
where it had been in her place in Kobe, but of course it wasn't there;
the Paris apartment wasn't modern enough to have a bed with a builtin
comm panel. Groaning, she squinted at the readout of her bedside
clock and saw that it was - Christ! - four-thirty in the morning.
Now awake enough to exercise simple motor skills, Nanami
finished rolling over, reached past the clock, and picked up the
phone. "Nani?" she asked it peevishly, then remembered again that she
wasn't in Japan any more and changed it to, "Qu'est-ce que c'est?"
"Ten rings, Jinnai, where the hell've you been?" came the
gravelly response.
"I was asleep, Meredith, what the hell?" Nanami replied. "I
was out until 3:45 covering that comparative religion conference. Did
you know the Kampiizi only perform their most important ceremonies
after midnight? Neither did I."
Producer Meredith Wayne was unsympathetic, as always. "Yeah,
well, life's tough at the bottom," she said sardonically. "Get out of
the sack and go down to Federation Plaza. Something big going down.
Marcelin will meet you at the Metro and brief you on the way."
Nanami blinked, all thought of protesting this shabby
treatment from the assignment desk erased by the name of the place to
which she was being sent. Federation Plaza! If something was going
on at Federation Plaza at 6 AM... that had the smell of a real story,
none of this cat-up-a-tree foolishness they'd had her on since she
came to town. Could Meredith Wayne finally be prepared to treat the
ex-weathergirl from Japan like the real reporter she dreamed of being?
"I'm on it," Nanami said, hoping Wayne would notice how brisk
and professional she sounded, and hung up. She scrambled out of bed,
ran into the bathroom to throw water on her face, then dressed almost
at a run and dashed out into the pinkish light of dawn.
Federation Plaza was a ten-minute Metro ride from
Montparnasse, but as the train was approaching, the PA system
apologetically informed all passengers that the Plaza station was
closed and the train would be going on to La Motte-Picquet. It wasn't
until she had backtracked most of the extra distance on foot that
Nanami saw why.
A cordon of gravity tanks and armored personnel carriers had
completely surrounded Federation Plaza, the gaps between them filled
in with the black-and-grey figures of Earthforce Security Division
troopers. Outside that cordon was another cordon, this one composed
of uniformed officers of the Paris Police Metropolitaine. In a few
places, the cops could be seen arguing with the soldiers, the troopers
standing stolidly, blaster rifles cradled, while the policemen
gesticulated in the Gallic style.
Nanami unconsciously ran a hand through her short, thick,
honey-blonde hair, readjusted the springy band that kept it out of her
eyes, straightened the press badge fixed to the front of her ISN
windbreaker, and ran toward the cordon, looking for someone who might
be in some sort of charge. A policeman met her partway and tried to
stop her.
>No, miss, you must go back, I am sorry,< he told her in
slightly breathless French. >It is not safe to approach the Plaza
just now.<
>I'm a reporter,< she told him, thumbing her press badge.
>What's going on? Why all the hardware?<
>I do not know exactly. Information is sketchy. It seems
terrorists have attacked Earthdome in Geneva,< the policeman replied.
>The Earthforce troops say they are here to guarantee the safety of
the Federation delegates.<
>Is that so?< Nanami replied skeptically. Gesturing past the
policeman's shoulder with one hand, she added, >Then why are their
guns facing -into- the Plaza?<
The cop looked nervously around and said urgently, >You should
not be here. Go now, or I won't be able to guarantee -your- safety.<
Nanami set her jaw defiantly. >Oh! So you acknowledge that
there's something funny going on here,< she said.
>I did not say that!< snapped the cop angrily. Turning her
roughly around by the shoulders, he propelled her a few paces down the
sidewalk with a vigorous shove. >Go now!<
>Whatever happened to freedom of the press?< she demanded.
>Suspended,< the cop replied grimly. >Haven't you heard?
We're under martial law!<
At Sneaky Dee's, audience and performers alike were entirely,
blissfully unaware of these developments. The show carried on,
finished up, went on for three encores. Afterward the band, tired but
exhilarated, cleaned up backstage while the club cleared out. By then
it was just past midnight. Some of the Valiant's company who had come
down to see the show returned, while the band and a few others
remained for a little after-hours loitering at the club. After all,
their clearance to orbit didn't expire until noon, and who knew when
they would see Dimitrios and the rest of the gang again?
"... c-can't b-b-believe you c-c-came all the w-way from
F-F-France j-just to see m-m-me and my b-b-b-band," said Kate to
Inspector Francoise La Fontaine.
"It was Lucas's idea," said La Fontaine in lightly accented
Standard, smiling indulgently at the slightly chubby sergeant. "He
saw the article in the New Avalon paper about your run-in with the
Klingons and thought it would be a terrible shame to miss it."
"And it would've been!" Lucas insisted with a shy, embarrassed
grin.
"I can't argue that," La Fontaine agreed.
"How about getting something to eat?" asked Joe Graf.
"I'll second that," agreed Utena. "Mass exodus to Happy
Seven?"
"No need for that!" said a voice from the stairs leading up to
the second-floor club. Everone turned, startled, to see a tall, lanky
figure with long straw-blond hair topping the staircase, two large
bags of takeout food in his hands. "Takeout from Happy Seven -
Delivered on the Wings of Angels!" declared Zach Stephens cheerily.
"Zach!" cried Utena, jumping to her feet. The chief
deliveryman of Celestial Pizza of Port Jeradar grinned, deposited his
burden on the bar, and then traded a high-five that turned into a
handshake with the Valiant's captain. "How the hell'd you get here?"
she asked him.
"I have my little ways," replied Zach with a faux-enigmatic
grin. "Toldja I'd take a day off if Kate played a special show."
"You've been here the whole time?" asked Miki.
"Yeah, in the back. Didn't wanna make a big deal out of it,"
replied Zach. "Dig in, it's still hot! Happy Seven might not
deliver, but I always do."
They distributed the food - by some peculiar miracle, everyone
got exactly what he or she would have ordered had they reached that
stage of the food-gathering process - and set to eating it, a
convivial group of twenty-seven - the band, the two former bandmembers
and Rina, the French cops, the Crush of Love, Truss and Jung, Mia and
Kozue and Imra, Zach, Utena and Wakaba, Janice Barlow and Neal
Krummell, Dimitrios and Roy Chernow. Discussions meandered here and
there, blending into one another. Political troubles were the last
thing on anyone's mind.
Until Truss, blinking, trailed suddenly off in what he'd been
saying to his daughter, looking into some unknown distance. Mia
looked at him in puzzlement - it almost looked as if someone else had
come up and joined the conversation, and her father was paying careful
attention to what the newcomer was telling him, except that there was
no one there. Mia glanced at Jung, to see that she was also paying
close attention to Truss - but the look on the redhead's face seemed
to indicate that she knew what he was doing.
Then his face darkened and he said to that same no one,
"Damn. OK, stand by." He turned to Dimitrios, his voice cutting
rudely across the conversations by the bar in a way that was most
unlike the John Trussell most of the young people there knew. "Turn
on the television. Any channel. Now."
Dimitrios blinked at the reporter, but he'd been around too
long and seen too much to quibble with a tone of voice like that; he
went to the television at the corner of the bar and switched it on.
" - statement issued by Earth Alliance President William
M. Clark in response to the Argentine attack on Geneva," a neatly
suited talking head was saying in front of a large, garish graphic
reading EARTHDOME IN CRISIS! "Here it is again for those of you who
are just tuning in. This statement was transmitted only moments ago
from President Clark's office at Earthdome."
The image switched to the face of President Clark with the
familiar backdrop of his office behind him - and through the windows
in the background could be seen the burning wreck of a Warhammer-class
Destroid and a scene of wild chaos, with blasterfire still flashing in
the greyish post-dawn light of Geneva's early morning in the plaza.
The current time (05:51 GMT) was shown in the upper right; at the
bottom of the screen was a banner reading:
PREVIOUSLY RECORDED - STATEMENT ISSUED 0545 GREENWICH MERIDIAN TIME
Clark looked steadily at the camera for a moment, as if not
certain he was on, then glanced down, looked back up and began to
speak.
"At 5:17 AM Geneva time, commandoes from the Empire of
Argentina assaulted the Earthdome complex in an attempt to seize or
destroy the government of the Earth Alliance. These troops were
equipped with the most advanced powered armor and armed with phasers,
disruptors, and certain chemical and biological tactical weapons named
in the Babel Accords as weaponry outlawed within the Federation.
"These commandoes were stopped at great cost by the
Presidential Guard of Earthforce, who are currently fighting off
followup waves from the Empire of Argentina. Earthforce troops have
secured Earthdome, the Federation Assembly in Paris, and Starfleet
Headquarters in San Francisco. The governments of the Federation and
of the Earth Alliance are in no danger.
"I am hereby declaring a state of martial law throughout the
Solar system, except for the independent state of Mars, until the
Empire of Argentina has been subdued and the system secured. All
citizens are instructed to return to their homes and remain there
until curfew is lifted by their Earthforce regional commander.
"The events of this morning have demonstrated beyond question
the folly of permitting multiple sovereignties to exist upon a single
planet. In the cause of peace we must unite this system under a
single authority, so that internecine attacks of this sort can never
happen again. In order to prevent future attacks upon the sole
legitimate government of Earth and its colonies, I am declaring the
full annexation of all formerly extraterritorial human nations within
the Solar system, including the Argentine Empire, the Republic of
Texas, the Principality of Zanzibar, and the colony of Titan."
Imra Ardeen gasped, her fingertips inadvertently rising to
touch one of her Saturn earrings.
Looking somber, Clark went gravely on, "I have one final
announcement to make, one which saddens me above all others. The
disappearance of an officer of the International Police Organization
in Argentine territory has led some within this government to accuse
the IPO of instigating this unprovoked attack against the Earth
Alliance.
"I personally do not believe this to be true, but as President
of the Earth Alliance I must act to uncover the full truth behind this
attack. For this purpose I am declaring Earth's acknowledgement of the
International Police Accord in abeyance pending a full investigation,
and ordering the protective detention of all IPO officers and
installations in Earth Alliance space. I request the IPO to cooperate
fully with this investigation, so that harmony and good will may be
restored between the IPO and the Earth Alliance government.
"In closing, I wish the good citizens of the Earth Alliance to
know that this government is in no danger, and that we shall not
permit any petty dictator from a renegade state to usurp the freedom
and security of our citizens. We shall not rest, and shall not cease,
until all threats to our republic have been nullified. With your
cooperation with Earthforce and Psi Corps officials, we shall bring
this unpleasant incident to a swift and lasting conclusion, insuring
the peace and prosperity of the Earth Alliance for millennia to come."
The recorded scene disappeared, replaced once more by the
anchorman in the suit. "Once again, you have just seen a statement
issued by President Clark just minutes ago in response to the
Argentine attack on Earthdome. Police in all of the Alliance's former
member states are coordinating with Earthforce liaison officers to
institute martial law throughout the Alliance. All off-duty police
officers must consider themselves recalled to duty and should report
to the nearest Earthforce Security Division office for new duty
assignments. Civilians should - "
Dimitrios switched the television off with a very colorful
Greek exclamation. For a moment, there was silence; then everyone
turned to look at Utena.
"Well, crap," she said, and pulled out her communicator.
"Tenjou to Valiant."
Ear-curling static poured out of the device's speaker grille.
Wincing, she adjusted a few controls, tuned it down to a dull roar,
and tried again. Nothing happened.
"J-jamming," said Kaitlyn, rising as well.
"They know we're here," Dorothy Wayneright observed calmly.
"An Earthforce Security team is probably on its way here right now to
arrest us."
"As police officers," observed Superintendent Marquette
calmly, "I believe that is technically -our- duty now." Everyone
turned to look warily at him, but the Frenchman only smiled sadly and
went on, "But I think not. I cannot speak for my colleagues of
course, but I am an officer of the French Criminal Police Service.
The President, he says there is no more France? Then me, I say I am
out of a job."
"Want to join the IPO?" asked Utena with a wan grin. "I think
we'll be hiring after this hits the fan. C'mon, you guys - let's get
out of - "
The door downstairs opened with a crash, and heavy boots on
the stairs heralded the arrival of Dorothy's predicted Earthforce
arrest team, ten armored officers with blaster rifles led by a man
with black shoulder panels and a flechette gun.
"You're all under arrest for martial law curfew violations,"
declared the squadleader. "We can sort out who gets more charges once
we've got you all down to the station. Come along quietly or things
will get very messy."
"Hey, hold it!" came another voice, still on the stairs. The
Earthforce Security troopers moved aside, looking slightly confused,
to make way for a Psi Corps Enforcement squad led by a grey-haired,
wiry female Psi Cop. She approached the Earthforce squadleader
irately.
"The IPO AEGIS ops are -ours-," she snapped.
"You can have them once we've processed everyone downtown,"
replied the squadleader contemptuously. "Earthforce has priority in
martial law situations."
"Bullshit!" snarled the Psi Cop. "You know goddamn well the
Corps has jurisdiction in all matters concerning rogue telepaths."
"Jurisdiction this," replied the Earthforce squadleader,
making an obscene gesture. "Get 'em outta here, boys."
"Harrison!" the Psi Cop barked.
"Ma'am!" said the burly leader of the Enforcer group.
"Any of these leatherneck mundanes puts a hand on Ardeen or
Carter, blast him."
"Uh... ma'am?"
"Stinking mindtapper!" roared the squadleader. He rounded on
the Psi Cop, raised his fletcher, and was dropped to his knees by a
pre-emptive telepathic attack.
With a howl of outrage, one of the other Earthforcers blasted
the Psi Cop point-blank, dropping her.
Things got very, very hectic after that. By the time the dust
settled, four Enforcers and five Earthforce Security officers were
dead or incapacitated and the rest were standing in the empty wreckage
of Sneaky Dee's, just piecing together how they'd all been had.
"God DAMN it!" snarled the ranking survivor from the
Earthforce team. "Call for backup and get AFTER them!"
Nanami Jinnai escaped an unfortunate fate by fifteen seconds
that morning. That was how long before Earthforce arrived that she
gave up trying to get into the ISN broadcast headquarters on the
Champs-Elysees, turned around, and started heading for the telephone
booth across the street. She had just reached and entered the booth
when the first armored personnel carriers surrounded the building and
the first troops knocked down the doors and swarmed inside.
With an inarticulate exclamation of surprise, she dropped a
token into the phone and called her boss.
"Nanami!" hissed Meredith Wayne. As suddenly as her image had
appeared, it vanished, replaced by the words "VIDEO MODE DISENGAGED"
on the pay phone's little semiholo display. "Get out of Paris if you
can," said Meredith. "Don't come to ISN - I've revoked your access
card. The troopers won't find you on the employment records because
you're fired."
"WHAT?!" Nanami blurted. "Meredith, what the hell's - "
"No time! They're coming in now. God knows who you'll see
when you turn on ISN tomorrow. Get out if you can. Find some way to
tell people what's happened - "
The sound of a door crashing open cut off the producer's
voice; there was the sound of a short scuffle, and then a gruff voice
said, "This is Sergeant Tennyson, Earthforce Security. To whom am I
speaking?"
Nanami hung up, pushed the booth open, and looked around the
ISN front plaza. A few troops loitered here and there, but none of
them seemed to notice her. Carefully, slowly, she backed away, into
the bushes ringing the decorative stone plaza -
- and bumped into somebody. Suppressing a scream, she whirled,
expecting to see another trooper, perhaps slightly surprised, ready to
take her into custody.
Instead she saw one of the icons of her industry.
"M-M-Mr. Carter!" she gasped. "What are you doing here?"
"Missing my flight," replied Edison Carter, Director of News
Services for Network 23, wryly. Time had worn his famous face
somewhat, adding more lines and greying his hair, but he was still
instantly recognizable. He was -the- face of television news for
Nanami's parents' generation, the definitive newsman. His integrity,
bravery and tenacity combined with Ben Cheviot's business genius and
rigorous personal standards had made Network 23 one of the most
powerful in the industry, the giant against which ISN employees liked
to imagine that they constantly struggled.
"And you, Miss Nanami Jinnai," Carter went on in his equally
unmistakable, slightly reedy but firm voice. "Why aren't you inside
getting arrested with the rest of your co-workers?"
"I just got fired," said Nanami, touching her press card
self-consciously. "I guess that means I should take this off," she
added, removing the card and pocketing it sadly.
"I'd lose that windbreaker too if I were you," Carter pointed
out.
Nanami glanced down at herself, realized that her windbreaker
had the logo of her former employers emblazoned on it both front and
back, and whipped it hastily off. It was chilly in the dawn of Paris,
though, so she reversed it and put it back on. The blue satin wasn't
as comfortable against her bare arms as the fuzzy white liner, but she
might not get instantly arrested this way.
"What are you going to do?" she asked Carter, trying not to
let the awe she felt at standing this near to him creep into her
voice.
He nodded toward the ISN building. "News happening," he
said. "Nobody else around - guess I'm covering it."
Words came out of Nanami's mouth before she consciously
thought of saying them:
"I don't suppose you could use an assistant?"
Carter grinned at her again, then gestured to the big, clunky
Network 23 sub-ether camera-transmitter he carried. "You know how to
use one of these?"
"That antique?" Nanami replied with a slightly wicked grin of
her own. "They taught us how to run those things in third grade."
"Watch your mouth," replied Edison, but he was still smiling.
He handed her the camera and said, "You're now my department's newest
intern."
"Intern?!" Nanami protested as she hefted the ethercam and
trained it on Edison Carter's famous face. "I'll have you know I was
a full field correspondent with ISN."
"Yeah, well, we'll talk about that if we ever get back to the
office," Carter replied wryly, moving so that the bushes still mostly
shielded him but the ISN building could be seen behind him. "Patch me
in."
Nanami switched on the camera, saw the red "L&D" light appear
in her viewfinder, and gave him a thumbs-up to supplement the red
light she knew he could see atop the camera. He nodded slightly,
composed himself, and then sent a thrill running up Nanami's spine as
he spoke the famous words that had, when she was a small child, swayed
her from the path of blind capitalism and toward the nobler calling of
the news:
"This is Edison Carter, coming to you live and direct on
Network 23... "
Imra Ardeen and Wakaba Shinohara ran down an alley in downtown
Toronto as fast as they could go; Imra didn't think they were being
followed, but better safe than sorry.
"Do you think everyone got out?" Wakaba asked as they ran.
"I think so," Imra replied. "I didn't sense anyone being
captured, but then I wasn't focusing too carefully. I was too busy
keeping that Psi Cop from noticing what Carter was up to."
"That was pretty slick," Wakaba remarked. "For a minute I
didn't know -what- the hell was going on."
"There's a lot of latent animosity between the Corps and just
about every other organization out there," Imra said, nodding.
"Exaggerating those feelings to the point where violence breaks out is
often not that difficult. It's a standard evasion technique, though
in the simulations they didn't usually end up -shooting- each other."
"OK, hold up a minute," said Wakaba. They slowed down, then
stopped, panting slightly. "Anyone around?"
Imra closed her eyes, concentrating. "Lot of background
noise," she murmured. "The city's very agitated tonight... "
"Martial law will do that to a city," Wakaba remarked wryly.
Imra nodded. "I'm not picking up anything threatening nearby,
though," she said. "I think we're clear for the moment. The question
is," she added, leaning back against the wall of the nearest building
with a sigh, "now what?"
"Now," Wakaba replied, "we get a little creative." She raised
her arm, pushed back her sleeve, and looked into the shifting green
light of her Lens. "Never really had to use this thing before," she
mused. "Let's see if it works."
Closing her own eyes in a similar look of concentration to the
one her telepath companion had just had, Wakaba focused her thoughts
on the gem and directed them outward in a general call for help:
It took her a moment to sort through the jumble of signals
that came back - there were apparently half a dozen Lensmen in North
America at the moment, and all of them were reporting approximately
the same situation.
One came through more strongly than the others, and Wakaba
tried to get a firmer lock on it at the cost of releasing the others:
came the reply - a deep,
confident 'voice', only a little rattled.
The fleeting impression of a wry smile.
When she came back from her Lens trance, she noticed Imra
looking curiously at her and shrugged. "Looks like it works," she
said. "We have six hours to get to Maine, which means that unless you
can fly and carry me with you, we're going to have to crash a
transporter station."
"I doubt the EA Transit Authority will be inclined to let us
use one," replied Imra with a sardonic grin.
"Then we'll ask nicely," said Wakaba in reply as she put a
hand on the grip of her sword.
A relatively short distance away, galactically speaking, the
Chief of the International Police was in his office aboard the IPSF
flagship Challenger, which held station just off International Police
Station Babylon 6 in orbit over Bajor. He was fiddling around with
personnel allocations for the next Defiant-class Next Generation
Destroyer, IPS Adamant, which was scheduled to be ready for trials by
mid-August, when the chime of his office door twittered.
"Come in!" he called, pushing his chair back a little and
leaning back. The door opened and Ruri entered. Behind her was
another, taller girl, slim and attractive with short brown hair. She
still wore the uniform of an IPO Tactical Division field officer, blue
coveralls, shirt, and cap, and Gryphon thought she looked a little
nervous.
"Here's my replacement," said Ruri without preamble. She
might have gone on to do an introduction or she might not; Gryphon
couldn't predict in advance and would never know, since the other girl
pre-empted her anyway by snapping to attention, saluting, and saying,
"Tactical Officer Luornu Durgo, Lensman, reporting for duty,
Fleet Captain!"
Gryphon got up from his chair and extended a hand with what he
hoped was a friendly, welcoming kind of smile. "Welcome aboard,
Lensman Durgo. We're not so formal here in the Space Force. You can
call me Captain, or Chief, or Boss, or Oyabun, or even Gryphon -
whatever strikes your fancy. I take it Ruri's filled you in on what
the job is?"
Luornu nodded as she took his offered hand. She had a good
handshake, not as timid as her overall demeanor, and as they made eye
contact over it, he noticed that she had interesting eyes - one of
them was amber, the other violet. She didn't look away, either, so
maybe her timidity was just an artifact of being in the August
Presence of the Chief for the first time.
Well, he remarked wryly to himself as he released her hand,
she'll get over that fast enough if she takes the job.
Then, as she lowered her hand, he noticed her Lens. It had
the same peculiar coloration as her eyes, half amber, half violet, the
two colors shifting alongside each other in a vaguely yin-yang-like
configuration. Most intriguing.
She took his attention away from it by dropping her hand to
her side, nodding, and replying, "Yes, sir. She's been showing me
the substance of it for the past few weeks, but she wanted to hold off
on the introduction until she was satisfied that I could do the job."
"She's a very hard worker," said Ruri, nodding, "and competent
in all the particulars. It will take her a little while to get up to
speed, of course, but I think she'll be... adequate," she added with a
tiny, tiny smile.
Luornu was apparently accustomed to Ruri's understated way of
talking, because she didn't take the somewhat minimal praise as an
insult, though it wasn't one, the way most people would have. She
only said,
"I'll do the best I can, sir. You may have to bear with me a
little in the early days, though, if you decide to accept me for the
position. After all, I can only be in three places at once."
Gryphon cocked an eyebrow at her, then smiled. "You're more
confident than you look, aren't you, Lensman?"
"Sometimes," replied Luornu with a little smile.
Gryphon laughed and slapped his desk. "I like you," he
declared. "The job's yours if you want it."
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't, sir."
"All righty, then. Ruri, looks like your last job for me will
be to transfer Lensman Durgo into the Space Force at the rank of...
oh, let's say Senior Lieutenant... and list her as your replacement."
Ruri nodded, then acknowledged the instructions with a phrase
she almost never used: "Aye aye, sir."
"Lieutenant Durgo," Gryphon went on, "your -first- job for me
will be to finalize Ruri's promotion. Then arrange transport for her
to Ishiyama so she can join Steamrunner for her trials - after you and
Jantzen arrange her going-away party, of course."
Luornu opened her mouth to respond, but at just that moment,
the trim stripe running shoulder-high along the office walls began
flashing yellow, an alarm hooted throughout the ship, and executive
officer Lore Soong's voice announced,
"Yellow alert. Captain to the bridge."
Gryphon looked from Ruri to Luornu, then shrugged. "Looks
like you're -both- my yeoman for the moment. Let's go see what's
going on."
At Toronto's Pearson International Spaceport, no officially
recognized lifeforms inhabited the bright blue Cygnus Spaceworks
executive shuttle parked in Bay 11-C. By the legal standards of the
Earth Alliance, there was no one aboard to look out onto the
ferrocrete hardstand to take note of the number of Earthforce troopers
surrounding the blue Lambda. With both of the shuttle's registered
human crew in the city, there was nobody left on the Morning Sun but
three droids and a computer.
The computer, which for reasons unknown even to his programmer
liked to call himself "Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci", stood in the
control cabin looking out at the troopers surrounding the Morning Sun
and scowling. Of course, he wasn't really standing there; he was a
holographic projection, and he wasn't looking across the hardstand
with his eyes but rather with the shuttle's passive visual sensors.
The effect was the same, though. He took a puff of his illusory
cigar, clamped it back in his illusory teeth, and scowled some more.
"OK, Rusty," he finally said. "Fire up the Beagle Boys."
The purple and grey R5 unit standing next to him blurbled
agreeably, whirled on his casters, and rolled aft, plugging into a
console on the main corridor bulkhead amidships. A moment later,
doors on either side of the corridor hissed open, revealing a pair of
Neimoidian battle droids, one beige, one grey.
"OK, boys," said Al, striding through Rusty and into the gap
between the two battle droids with his hands folded behind his back
and his face businesslike as though he really were an admiral. "Rise
and shine, the boss needs your help. Load up program modules A-23 and
C-17 and hop to it. I'll give you the details when you're loaded."
"A-23," replied the two droids in their similar but slightly
differentiated monotone voices. "C-17. Roger. Roger."
There came a series of clicks and whirs as the configuration
systems built into the two droids' storage bays automatically selected
the enhanced programming modules requested and slotted them into the
expansion slots on the robots' backs. They stiffened slightly as new
information and abilities became available to their limited positronic
matrices. The grey one wobbled a little on his feet, then announced,
"... I know kung fu."
"Yeah, yeah, congratulations," Al replied. "Now get back to
the ramp and wait for instructions."
"Roger. Roger."
Janice Barlow was feeling a bit grumpy. And who could blame
her, really? She'd been having a great night, complete with surprise
visit from her sort-of-boyfriend, IPO officer Neal Krummell, who'd
gated over from Titan for the show and was planning on taking the long
way back to his posting with Valiant. And then all -this- had
happened, and now she and Neal, along with Superintendent Marquette of
the Paris police, the Crush of Love, and the pizza guy from DSM, were
running down an alley in the general direction of the University of
Toronto.
She was just about to put her discontent into words when Neal
did it for her: "This -sucks-."
"No kidding," she replied. "How the hell are we going to get
out of this?"
"If I could get to Regional HQ in Maine, they're probably
using the stargate to evac everybody to Titan," said Neal. "Which is
probably an unholy mess itself, right now. Annexed, my furry white
butt! Dammit, I have to get back there."
Zach Stephens, in the lead, took a sharp right down another
alley and led them out onto the sidewalk along Spadina Avenue.
"No problem," he said. "I know a shortcut." He stuck the
tips of his little fingers into the corners of his mouth and emitted a
piercing whistle.
Janice gave him a weird look, but before she could say
anything, the roar of an approaching engine caught her attention. A
moment later, an antique Cadillac hearse, black with a flame job and
the words "HOT PIZZA" painted backward on the leading edge of the
hood, skidded around the corner from Bathurst and screeched to a halt
in front of them.
"Good boy," said Zach, absently patting the hood. "All
aboard!" he called, opening the passenger's door and sliding across
the front seat into the vacant driver's position.
Neal and Janice, puzzled but game, piled in, as did
Superintendent Marquette. The old car was so huge that the four of
them fit without much discomfort, despite Krummell's sturdy build and
the Superintendent's broad shoulders. Zach leaned across them and
gestured with a thumb to the back.
"You guys don't mind the accommodations, there's plenty of
room," he said to Joe Graf and his band.
Joe shrugged. "What the hell, we're practically home," he
said. "Figure we'll just see if we can slip through the patrols and
get back to our apartments. Good luck, you guys," he added to Neal
and Janice. "If you see Kate, tell her I'm damn sorry this had to
happen in my town... "
"Will do," said Janice, nodding. "Good luck, Joe. Maybe
we'll see you around sometime."
"I hope so," Joe replied. He patted the passenger doorframe
atop the open window, looking sad; then he and the other members of
the Crush turned and slipped back into the alley they'd come from.
"OK," said Zach, pulling the Caddy's gearshift lever down into
"Drive". "So, Bangor, then. Cool. I can do that." He pressed the
accelerator, and the Caddy snarled and pulled off down the empty
street. "Super, you want me to drop you in Paris on the way?"
Marquette blinked. "Er... no, thank you," he replied,
thinking to himself that this young man's sense of humor could stand
to be in better taste.
But Zach only shrugged and replied, "Suit yourself," in his
easygoing way. He was the picture of relaxation at the wheel despite
the fact that all North America's cities were bound to be swarming
with nervous cops with shoot-on-sight orders for curfew violators; one
arm out the window, right hand lazily gripping the top of the wheel, a
man in his element and in tune with his surroundings.
"You guys like music?" he asked offhandedly. "Stupid
question, right?" he replied to himself with a sheepish grin. "Duh,
where were you just?" Then he reached to the radio and flicked it on
before slinging the big Caddy around a sharp left and down a narrow
street.
"The highway's the other way," Neal protested over the throb
of an Alpha Collider techno-trance number.
"Maybe yours is, man," Zach replied cheerily, "but you're not
drivin'."
When he had taken the job of chief engineer of the IPO
starship Valiant, Corwin Ravenhair had never particularly expected to
find himself serving as officer of the deck in a crisis situation.
He'd thought that his working hours would be spent in his office aft
of the bridge, overlooking Main Engineering and the intermix chamber,
and his off-duty hours... well, most of them would be spent there too,
fiddling with various ideas and concepts on the heavy-duty computers
there.
But as luck would have it, here he was, having come up
directly after the show to get an early night before the following
day's short hop and concert on Titan. As they had a day off after the
Titan show, he'd been planning to hold the post-show gathering at his
castle, and he didn't expect to be getting much sleep, so he was
planning to stock up now.
And, of course, -this- had happened.
When he arrived on the bridge, he found Sub-Commander Klaang
scowling at the communications panel and Anthy peering sleepily into
the room from the opposite corridor door.
"OK," he said, stifling a yawn. "I've read Clark's
statement. What do the Orbital Patrol people want us to do about it?"
"Listen for yourself," grunted Klaang. He switched the
channel he was listening to from his earbug to the overhead speakers.
" - leave the system immediately or shut down your engines and
receive boarders. Respond immediately, Valiant."
Corwin scowled, his agile mind filling in the gaps in a
moment, stepped to the conn, sat, and punched a key on one of the side
panels.
"This is Chief Engineer Corwin Ravenhair, currently standing
the watch on IPS Valiant," he said. "We've still got personnel
planetside. Thanks to your communications blackout, it's going to
take us a while to find them and - "
"You have two choices, Valiant," the voice of the Earthforce
comm operator cut him off. "You can leave them behind or join them in
detention."
"Even if this wasn't bullshit," Corwin snapped back, "they're
not all IPO personnel. You did know about the band we're touring?"
"Oh, yeah, your 'band'. Not a very convincing cover for an
espionage squad. Tell your boss better luck next time. If I don't
see you setting course for outsystem and firing up your FTL of choice
or powering down for boarding within 5 minutes, I start shooting.
Hieronymus out."
"Fuck," Corwin muttered. "Klaang, anything?"
The Klingon frowned ferociously into his sensor scope. "No,"
he said after a moment. "They've got our air-to-ground communications
bands blocked solid. I can't raise anybody down there, or pick up
anyone's transponder signal. Can you get Shinohara with your Lens?"
Corwin glanced at the gleaming gem which formed the basis of
his wristwatch. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "It's not the same kind
of Lens. Anyway, I couldn't use it to get a transporter lock on her."
He concentrated anyway, feeling his way through the unfamiliar terrain
of the gem's telepathic capabilities. The Lens he wore was a
Cephirean mage's Lens, not one of his mother's creations, but he knew
they shared some similar properties, and his mother had successfully
contacted him using her own at one point - but whether that was
actually the Lens's doing or just the resonance of their divine blood,
he wasn't really sure now that he thought about it.
It seemed to be the former, though, because after a few
moments' fumbling, he heard Wakaba's voice in his head:
Corwin
observed.
Corwin scanned the tactical plot and decided that made sense.
Wakaba replied wryly. Corwin cut the link, sat back, and
sighed. "Fuck," he repeated softly.
"What's happened?" Anthy asked. Corwin started slightly - he
had forgotten she was there, and now felt bad about having sworn twice
in front of her - and then gave her the quick outline.
"Two minutes," rumbled Klaang from his station, where he was
still hunched over his scope looking for signs of the landing party.
"Bastards," Corwin snarled, his embarrassment for Anthy's sake
forgotten in the wave of outrage that swept over him. Damn them, DAMN
them - Utena was still down there, and Kaitlyn, and all the rest. He
couldn't just loll around up here, and he sure as hell couldn't run
away and leave them behind!
He got up from the conn and started toward the helm station,
and suddenly Anthy was next to him, her hand on his arm, her soft
green eyes meeting his own - hey, when did she start wearing glasses
again? Nice ones, though, this time - and stealing the anger from them.
"What are you going to do?" she asked quietly.
"What -can- I do?" he replied. "I can't leave them down
there. I can't just run away."
"You can't mean to shoot your way to the surface and back out
again. That would be suicide, even with this ship."
Corwin opened his mouth to dispute the point, realized it was
valid, and fell silent, his big hands working helplessly. Then he
shook his head and said, "All right, then - Klaang, you get the ship
clear. I'll go down there and - "
"And what?" Anthy interrupted gently. "Find everyone somehow
and... what? Send them to Cephiro? Bring them through windows one by
one to somewhere else? There are more than a dozen of them. Your
strength isn't infinite, especially in Midgard."
She said all of this very softly, very gently - not to throw
his limitations in his face, but merely to remind him of them, to
prevent him from giving into his rashest instincts and setting himself
on a course to destruction. He recognized all that in a flash of
intuition that headed off any indignant reaction, and instead of
flaring, he sighed, long and disconsolately.
Anthy slid her hand down his forearm and took his hand firmly
in hers. "Utena will find a way back to us," she said, her soft voice
charged with an intensity that shouldn't have surprised him, after all
he'd seen her do, but still somehow did. "Our duty in the meantime is
to make sure we're somewhere to be found." She smiled, a little
wryly, and added, "Trust me, Corwin... it's an activity I have -some-
practical experience with."
Corwin felt himself smile despite the boil of emotions that
still bubbled within him. He squeezed her hand, let it go, and went
to the helm station anyway - after all, someone had to drive if they
were going to put their tail between their legs and run.
Klaang rumbled slightly, and Corwin knew the Warrior of
Science didn't like it any more than he did... but as he took his
seat, a plan came to his mind, and the little smile he'd given Anthy
broadened into something more wicked.
He keyed the helm station's comm functions online and said,
"Valiant to Hieronymus, come in please."
"This is Captain Edwin Planck speaking. You've still got 40
seconds," said the voice of the Hieronymus's commanding officer
sarcastically. "What's it gonna be? Fight or flight?"
"Neither," Corwin replied flatly. "IPS Valiant requests
clearance to break orbit for intrasystem transit. Destination... "
His wicked little smile twisted a little more as he added, relishing
the single syllable to its utmost, "Mars."
"... What?!" blurted the Earthforce Orbital Patrol officer.
"You can't do that!" he snapped after recovering his balance. "You've
been ordered to leave the system - "
"The sovereign Martian government is signatory to the Pact
Babylonica and the International Police Accords," Corwin informed him
pleasantly. "Unless President Clark has decided to annex -them-,
too," he added, in a tone of voice that made it plain how likely he
thought that to be. The telepathic, shape-shifting, tranquility-loving
Martians scared the hell out of the Psi Corps and Earthforce.
No, there was no way Earth would risk a second war with Mars;
only the intervention of the Wedge Defense Force had prevented the
first one, back in the twenty-first century, from ending in mass
tragedy on both sides. The Martians might like things quiet, but if
roused they were implacable enemies, and very, very powerful.
"You put one maneuvering thruster out of line, Valiant,"
snapped Captain Planck, "and I'll blow you clear to the Kuiper Belt.
Got it?"
"Aye aye, sir," Corwin replied nastily. "See you around."
"Not if I see you first," snarled Planck, and the channel was
cut. Corwin put the ship in motion, then turned in the helmsman's
seat to address his one-Klingon crew.
"Klaang, you want to tell the Martians we're coming? We
should only need to borrow an orbital lane for a couple of hours at
most." He turned a little more and grinned at Anthy. "You're right,
you know," he told her. "If I know Utena, she's halfway to a solution
to this mess by now - head down and fists clenched."
Anthy laughed. "I imagine so," she replied.
As it turned out, Corwin was half right. Utena didn't have
her head down at that moment, but she did have her fists clenched. It
wasn't, perhaps, particularly elegant for the Grand Duelist of Cephiro
to just haul off and slug an Earthforce trooper, but it was less messy
and permanent than lopping off his head with the Thorn of the Rose
would have been.
Locating the Earthforce Emergency Transporter Center in
Toronto had been simple. Getting to the building hadn't been much of
a challenge either. Neither had actually getting into the structure
itself. Unfortunately, the low-security areas, like the lobbies,
briefing rooms and staging areas, weren't of any particular use to
Utena and the group she'd assembled after the scatter from Sneaky
Dee's. What they were after was one of the actual transporter rooms,
and those would be secured.
On the face of it, it didn't seem like a very smart plan,
invading a high-security Earthforce installation in the middle of
martial law - but that was the beauty of the plan, as Utena saw it.
Martial law had been declared just over two hours ago now. For the
first hour, this place was a hive, full of troopers being beamed in
from staging areas around North America and then flooding out into the
streets to break up demonstrations, pack angry citizens off to their
homes or jail, and secure government buildings and public transit
systems.
But that hour was past, and now the Center itself was quiet,
almost deserted. Only a skeleton crew of security officers had been
left behind to keep an eye on the place - after all, who was going to
try and break into a transporter center? With the orbital relay
stations shut down and the station not equipped with out-of-band
beaming capabilities, the transporters there could only take intruders
somewhere else in the hardwired network - which meant beaming straight
into the lap of -another- TC's security force. So what would be the
use?
So getting in hadn't been tough, but now the four of them -
Utena, Mia Ausa, and two of the three hapless French cops - faced
their first real challenge: the secured corridor leading from Assembly
Area B to the transporter core. This was about twenty feet long, and
was secured by blast doors at the far end which were controlled by a
man in an armored booth off the near end.
"Hmm," mused Utena as she knelt at the corner and peeked
around it at the booth. "Pretty sturdy-looking. We're going to have
to get him out of there. Mia, I don't suppose you have anything that
can take out that door?"
"Not really," Mia replied. "Anything I could do that would be
powerful enough to bring the door down would probably destroy the
whole booth."
"Allow me," said Inspector La Fontaine with a smile. She got
to her feet, tugging Lucas up with her, and the two of them strode
boldly out into the corridor. Utena blinked after them, then realized
what La Fontaine must be up to. Quickly, she moved as well, staying
close to the wall so that the man in the booth wouldn't spot her, Mia
hard on her heels. The two of them slipped up to the side of the
booth and flanked the door just as the two detectives reached the
window.
"Halt!" crackled the guard's voice through the intercom
speaker below the window. "Identify yourselves."
"But certainly," said La Fontaine, a little breathlessly, as
though she'd just been running. "I am Inspector Francoise La
Fontaine. This is Sergeant Martin Lucas. We are officers of the
Bureau de Police Criminale, Paris. We were here on vacation. We must
return to Paris immediately!"
The guard ceased to look alarmed and settled into a merely
wary demeanor. "Sorry," he said, though he neither sounded nor looked
it. "Earthforce only. You'll have to stay here for the time being.
Go down the street to the local police headquarters. I'm sure they
can find something you can help with."
"But no, this is terrible!" cried La Fontaine, wringing her
hands.
Lucas took his cue beautifully, sliding in front of his
distressed colleague, leaning against the glass, and lowering his
voice confidentally. "Listen, friend... we're off duty, yes, but
we're not really supposed to be out of town. You know? We figured if
there was an emergency, we could just come here and - poof! Yes? We
never counted on a -global- emergency. Help us out, will you?" He
smiled conspiratorially. "I can make it worth your while."
The Earthforce guard gave him a skeptical look. "Oh yeah?"
Lucas's smile broadened just a little, sly and a bit oily. He
reached into his coat, took out his wallet, and cocked it slightly so
that the thick sheaf of cash within was visible edge-on. "But yes,"
he replied.
The guard weighed his options for a couple of seconds, then
shrugged. After all, they -were- cops. "Wait there," he said, then
keyed the booth door and stepped out into the alcove.
Something heavy, hard and pointy smashed into the side of his
face. He never felt himself hit the floor.
Utena sheathed the Thorn of the Rose, relieved the unconscious
guard of his blaster, then stepped over his body and rounded the
corner to grin at Lucas while Mia slipped into the booth and opened
the blast doors.
"Slick," said Utena. Momentarily, Mia rejoined them, and the
four headed into the transporter core.
Amanda Elektra Dessler swept onto the bridge of her personal
starship, boiling with rage. She stripped off her traveling coat and
flung it randomly into a far corner; Rina Dragonaar made a mental note
to retrieve it later.
"This is the second time these people have tried to mistreat
me and my friends," Amanda snarled as she dropped into the thronelike
seat the Lorica's rebuilders had installed for her at the back of the
bridge. "I exercise forbearance for your sake, Earthman, but by Kru's
bloodstained axe, my patience is not infinite!"
Devlin Carter cracked a little smile and replied, "I'm quite
aware of that."
Amanda wheeled in her chair to glare at him, and her anger
melted in the face of his mild, inoffensive smile and the slyness it
nearly concealed in his eyes. She couldn't help it; she laughed, then
turned back to face the main viewer with a clearer, if still outraged,
mind.
"Commander Jethan!" she said.
"Yes, Your Highness," replied the Lorica's Romulan captain,
who still stood next to his command chair where he had risen when she
entered.
"Status?"
"We're at Condition Yellow," Jethan reported. "Weapons
precharged, shield generators on standby, all personnel at battle
stations. Cloaking device is functioning normally and we do not
appear to have been detected."
"Excellent. Report."
"When the Earth President issued his edict, we were ordered to
leave the system or be fired upon. We protested for form's sake,
acceded to their claims that you would be treated with the respect
due your station and repatriated immediately, and jumped to hyperspace
with our tails between our legs." The handsome Romulan smiled thinly
and added with an arched eyebrow, "And then we dropped from hyperspace
thirty light-minutes out, cloaked, turned around, and came back."
Amanda smiled in return. "Perfect. Well done, Commander.
You are still tracking the Valiant?"
"Of course, Your Highness. She's making for Mars at half
impulse. The Earthforce Orbital Patrol are keeping a close eye on
her."
"Get me a laser link with her," said Amanda. "I want to talk
to Ravenhair - I imagine he's in command with the others stuck below -
and find out what his plan is. He would never leave Tenjou behind
without a very good reason."
Jethan saluted Romulan-style, fist to chest, and turned to
direct his comm officer to obey Amanda's instructions.
Nanami Jinnai had never, in all her life, been shot at before,
and she wasn't relishing the experience much. Not much, she had to
admit as she ducked behind the corner of a building and kept running,
but a little, yes. It was exhilarating that she had a part in such
important events, that she was here helping to chronicle them for
posterity - but she was a trifle concerned about her -own- posterity.
Or her posterior, for that matter. Both were liable to get shot to
bits if she and Carter didn't shake the Earthforce patrol that had
finally spotted them covering ISN's closure.
"I need an exit, Theora!" Edison Carter shouted into his
handlink as he and Nanami pelted down some nameless side street in the
8th arrondissement. "Theora? Theora!" He cursed as nothing came
from his link in response but an ominous silence.
Nanami was beginning to wish she didn't have to carry this
two-ton antique camera, but she dared not drop it. It was their only
link to the outside with Edison's communicator offline, and even if it
was only one-way, it was what made their presence here, in this
dangerous mess, -mean- something. Without it they would just be
another pair of fugitives; with it they were chronicling the end of
democracy on Earth.
Edison glanced over his shoulder, saw that she was falling
behind, and stopped running, letting her (and the troopers chasing
them) catch up a little. At her puzzled glance, he relieved her of
the camera, hoisted it to his shoulder, and said, "Go! Keep going!"
Now she was in the lead, running for all she was worth,
listening to the pounding of Edison's footsteps and, further back, the
low, thunderous tromping of the Earthforcers' boots. She - and this
gave her a little thrill even under the circumstances - was what
Network 23's viewers were seeing as they tried to make sense of the
chaos that had erupted in Paris.
That gave her an obligation, and, being a journalist, Nanami
met that obligation.
"The sounds you hear behind us," she panted as she ran, "are
made by a squad of Earthforce troopers - a dozen or more, I haven't
had a chance to stop and make an accurate count - as they pursue two
journalists engaged in their lawful business of reporting the news."
A well-timed plasma pulse ripped overhead just then, blowing a
hole in the fire escape of the building they were running alongside,
and Nanami ducked slightly out of instinct before taking up the thread
of her narrative again: "That was weapons fire, directed at us. It
seems clear at this point," she added wryly, "that they're not
interested in detaining us for questioning."
They plunged out of the little street and straight into a
green, grassy park with trees and benches scattered here and there.
Nanami, who was still unfamiliar with Paris, didn't know which of the
city's many parks it was, but Edison knew.
"This is the Parc Monceau!" he called to Nanami. "Keep
heading north! We're almost to the 17th arrondissement. I know some
people up there who can - "
He trailed off, because, like Nanami, he had just seen the
second group of soldiers entering the park at the north end, from the
Place de la Republique Dominiciane. Unless they could cut across the
park, they were boxed, and they knew it. Nanami skidded to a halt and
turned around to face both Edison and the camera; behind him she could
see their pursuers reaching the end of the little street.
"It looks like they've got us cornered," she said matter-of-
factly, inwardly surprised that she was so calm about her own
impending death. "I don't know what their full intentions are, but
they've already seen the camera and it hasn't stopped them from
shooting. There's not much we can do now but watch and wait - "
"Get down!" cried Edison. He swung the camera down from his
shoulder, gripping it by its top handle in one hand, and flung himself
forward, tackling Nanami and bearing her down to the ground on her
back. She gasped painfully, the wind knocked out of her, and couldn't
ask him what the idea was - but a moment later she found out anyway,
as a big pink shape roared past overhead and disruptorfire slashed at
the ground between the two reporters and the squad that had been
chasing them. Edison, and the audience, had seen it coming from the
north; Nanami, with her back turned, had not.
The pink shape, an exaggerated bird form with upraised wings,
an aggressive-looking 'snout' at the front and a glowing bar of an
impulse thruster at the back, banked low over the rooftops of the 8th
arrondissement, then came back for another pass. The disruptor
cannons on its wingtips scattered Earthforce soldiers everywhere on
both sides of Nanami and Edison's huddled position as the ship
screamed overhead, then pivoted in midair with a howl of repulsors and
dropped to the turf of the park.
Edison raised himself to hands and knees, freeing Nanami from
the weight of his body; she rolled over, coughing, and got herself
partly upright as well. Then she gasped again, this time in
astonishment at the sight of their rescuer.
It was an old Klingon warship, a B'rel-class escort vessel,
better known to most Earthpeople as a Bird of Prey. Unlike the ones
Nanami had seen in news footage of the Empire, though, this one wasn't
mostly green. It was dented and rusty, and its spotty thermocoat was
a horrific shade of pink that might once, decades before, have been
red. What was startling about it, though, was its markings. It
lacked registration tags or barcodes anywhere Nanami could see. The
only marks it had were large, garishly hand-sprayed letters on its
wings, which shouted to the world:
BIG TIME TELEVISION
Edison's face lit up with delight and recognition; he raised
himself to his feet and yelled, "REG!"
As the Klingon's ramp touched earth, there came a crackle and
feedback whine from the ship's PA system, followed by a rough voice
with a thick accent - British, maybe, or colonial - saying,
"Oi, Edison! Better git y'self aboard! Things're liable
t'get a mite hectic round here in a minnit."
John Trussell crouched at the corner of Revetment 11, trying
to make himself as small as possible, hoping none of the Earthforce
troops standing in a cordon around the entrance to Bay 11-C would look
his way and notice him. He wasn't looking at them for his own
benefit, really; Al wanted a look at them from a better vantage point
than his own, and Truss's cybernetic interface implant was obliging
him.
Fortunately, Truss had owned the implant long enough that he
was now used to the fact that no one else could see Al; otherwise, he
would have been quite alarmed by the way the hologram-like image of
his AI barged right out into the middle of the revetment's central
courtyard to assess the strength of the Earthforcers guarding its
northeast corner bay. As it was, he only cringed a little inside
every time one of the soldiers' visors turned past the spot where Al
was "standing".
Behind him, he could feel Jung Freud's tension, and fancied
that he'd have been able to feel it even -without- his minor
telepathic gift. He didn't have to look to know the expression on her
face. These clowns weren't actually pawing at her ship, but they were
coming awfully close. Behind -her-, Kozue Kaoru and the Art of Noise
crowded against the concrete retaining wall, waiting for Truss or Jung
to do something.
Truss backed away from the corner, bumping Jung back behind
him, and turned to face the others. "OK," he murmured. "Here's the
plan, such as it is. Al's going to send out our security droids.
Once they've engaged the Earthforce troops, we're going to have to run
for it."
"Aside from Truss and me, is anyone armed?" asked Jung.
Kaitlyn nodded. "With a -real- weapon," Jung told her, with a touch
of the professional's impatience for the well-meaning amateur in her
voice.
If it was supposed to cow Kate, though, it didn't wash. The
brown-haired Duelist leader narrowed her eyes slightly and replied in
a cold, quiet voice, "G-get in my w-w-way, and y-you'll s-see how
r-r-real it is."
Jung read Kate's eyes, realized that she'd misjudged, and
nodded concession of the point. "Anyone else?"
Moose MacEchearn folded his massive arms and said nothing,
only smiled a cold sort of smile. R. Dorothy, too, was silent, but
one corner of her mouth rose, just a little bit. Liza Shustal, the
band's engineer, reached into the bag in which she carried her circuit
testers, output meters and so on, and pulled out a Cardassian
disruptor, the usefulness of which in setting up a rock band's
performance suite was not immediately apparent. No one else spoke up,
but nobody shrank back, either.
"OK," said Jung. Turning back to Truss, she said, "I think
we'll do all right."
Truss drew his Bajoran phaser (a gift from a major in the
Bajoran Armed Forces back when he'd been part of the WDF task force
which had driven the Cardassians from that world after the War of
Corporate Occupation) and thumbed its setting high. The Earthforce
troopers were wearing energy-diffusing armor, and a stun setting would
just annoy them. He didn't really like the idea of using lethal
force, but he knew that the opposition wouldn't have any objection to
doing so; Al had already told him that Earthforce was -attacking- the
Network 23 headquarters compound in Sydney, and finding it a
considerably harder nut to crack than ISN HQ in Paris had been, if
Edison Carter's report was to be believed.
"All right," said Truss. "Go, Al."
Al nodded and turned to someone on his end of the neuroillusory
connection. "OK, you two, get busy."
A moment later, the Morning Sun's ramp clicked, hissed, and
began to lower. The Earthforce troops turned in surprise, making
noises of consternation and raising their weapons.
A moment after -that-, G-3N3 and R-06R charged out, jumping
down before the ramp was fully lowered, and started making a mess.
"OK, let's GO!" cried Jung, bolting up from concealment. The
rest of the group followed her and Truss as they darted around the
corner and ran for the ship. The soldiers, aside from the two who had
already been incapacitated by Gene and Roger, heard them coming and
whirled in astonishment.
"It's -them-!" cried the one with sergeant's stripes on his
armor pauldrons. "Grife, I can't believe they were stupid enough to
come here! TAKE 'EM!"
Then he raised his sidearm and pegged a blaster shot at
Kaitlyn. She didn't seem to care; her eyes were narrowed into the
concentrated glare that was familiar to all who had seen her fight.
Her zatoichi whispered from its wooden scabbard and flashed; the bolt
sparked against it and rebounded, blowing off one of the sergeant's
pauldrons and sending him heavily to the ground.
What followed was extremely violent and chaotic. The two
battle droids had disembarked empty-handed, proceeding with the
engagement using their close-combat software, but when the
Earthforcers started shooting at the humans they drew their blaster
carbines and brought them into play as well. The Duelists and
bandmembers scattered to break up their opponents' range of targets,
and then each got involved according to his or her own abilities.
Truss and Jung worked together with the ease of long practice
getting out of tight spots, working their way with surgical precision
to their ship and leaving a path open behind them. Miki and Kozue
Kaoru, neither armed, stayed close together and moved from cover to
cover. Kate worked the Earthforce contingent's right flank, moving
like smoke, now visible and now not, using the soldiers' own firepower
against them. Liza Shustal, on the other flank with Azalynn dv'Ir
Natashkan by her side, stole occasional moments from her work with
disruptor and Ishkarat saber to admire her ex-rival's clean lines and
flowing grace amid the mayhem.
Moose MacEchearn had neither of those; he just waded into the
middle of the action and used his mass and power to their natural
advantages. None of the troopers they were up against had ever -seen-
a Hoffmanite before, let alone fought one, and in these close quarters
it didn't really matter that Moose was unarmed. The same went for
Dorothy, who had her internal power levels raised to their operative
maximum levels and was moving so quickly and precisely that she
sometimes seemed to disappear. She didn't need to deflect blasterfire
or overpower men before they could fire at her; she could simply get
out of its way before it reached her.
At the base of the ramp, Kozue spied the craft in Bay 11-D and
suddenly smiled. "I'll see you up above," she told Miki; then she
gave him a hasty kiss, released his hand and headed for it.
"What?" Miki replied, slightly flustered. "Where are you
going?"
"To do some good!" Kozue replied, darting past the Morning
Sun's portside landing leg. One of the troopers, who had been hanging
back off the left side of the battle with his blaster carbine's
shoulder stock extended, looking for shots of opportunity, turned to
see her coming and, with a surprised exclamation, took a shot at her.
It was hurried and poorly aimed, though, and as he was turning, Kozue
dove to the ground anyway; the blast passed well over her and scorched
the Morning Sun's landing gear.
Kozue hit the tarmac rolling, barking her elbow painfully, but
the dive had its desired effect; as she rolled over the squadleader's
dropped blaster pistol, her hand closed on its grip, and when she came
up she zapped the trooper square in the chestplate, bowling him over
backward with a great clatter of armor on ferrocrete.
Not bad, she remarked to herself with a little grin as she
hopped over his sprawled form and sprinted for Bay 11-D. Just like
Tenjou would've done it.
Well, no, she corrected herself; she'd probably have just run
up and slugged him. But it's the thought that counts.
"Your sister's got some nice moves," Azalynn observed as she
reached the ramp and paused next to Miki.
Once the slightly-elder Kaoru got his heart working again, he
was able to acknowledge that yes, it -had- been a pretty nice move.
Kozue reached 11-D without further incident. When they'd
arrived at Revetment 11, there had been two troopers flanking the
entrance to this bay too, but from that approach angle, Kozue couldn't
see what was in it that they were guarding. As she approached,
though, she saw that she'd been right, and her grin widened. She
swarmed up to the cockpit, punched in the override code, swung into
the seat, and retracted the boarding ladder.
"You're lucky I came along," she told the Swordfish II
cheerfully as she fished her keyrod out of her pocket and plugged it
into the security lock. "Utena would have been really upset if we'd
had to leave you behind."
Kozue's first small-craft solo flight had been at the controls
of Utena's scarlet fighter, a former asteroid racer and a gift from
its builder, Corwin's father, and Corwin himself on the captain's
previous birthday. The trainee pilot had standing permission to fly
the Swordfish II whenever conditions permitted - it was why Utena had
given her the spare key - and she took advantage of that permission
any time she could, so by now she knew the preflight like her own
morning routine. The fighter's fusion turbine was spooling up even as
its wings cranked down and locked into flight position.
While she waited for the turbine to come up to operating
temperature, Kozue strapped in and pulled on Utena's helmet, which had
been left in the seat. It was a little too large for her, but she
hadn't brought her own, so it would have to do. Once she had the boom
mike positioned, she thumbed on the comm system.
"Swordfish II to Valiant, come in, Valiant. Swordfish II to
Valiant, come in, Valiant."
"Valiant here," came the voice of Kyouichi Saionji after a
moment - no video signal came through. "Your signal is faint, three
by five but readable. Is that you, Tenjou?"
"No, it's Kozue," replied Kozue. "Utena went the other way
from Sneaky Dee's, she's probably downtown somewhere. Truss and the
band are getting out of here on Truss's shuttle, and I'm going to
cover them. Where are you?"
"Heading for Martian orbit," Saionji replied. "They told us
to leave the system or be boarded, but the Martians are sovereign, and
they've agreed to let us park while we figure out how to get everyone
out."
The holographic viewing area divided diagonally; in one half
the static that should have been an image of Saionji remained, while
the other contained an image of Truss.
"Are you OK, Kozue?" he asked.
"Fine. You?"
"A few bruises and minor burns, but we're mostly all right."
"This unit has lost an arm," protested one of the battle
droids' flat voices.
"Ah, shaddap, you," the voice of Al replied. "Rusty, if this
one complains again, convert him into a toaster oven."
Rusty breedled indignantly.
"Put a sock in it, you guys!" snapped Jung, who now crowded
into the viewpane with Truss. "Look, we're raising ship in ten
seconds. Long range sensors show ground reinforcements coming up from
the south and aero units inbound from the north. Got a preference?"
"I'll cover you in the air," Kozue replied. "I don't have
much in the way of ground-attack weapons."
Jung nodded. "I figured. OK, we'll take our chances with the
groundpounders. You about ready to take off?"
Kozue glanced at the engine status readouts and nodded.
"Whenever you are."
Five Earthforce Security officers slept peacefully in the
corner of Transporter Room Nine, courtesy of a particular favorite
spell of Mia's. Eight more littered the corridors of the transporter
core block, in various somewhat less comfortable states of
unconsciousness, courtesy of Mia's Minbari fighting staff, the spiked
basket of the Thorn of the Rose, and Sergeant Lucas's fists. (With
somewhat archaic but well-meaning Gallic gallantry, the sergeant had
insisted that Inspector La Fontaine stay behind him when things got
violent.)
Now Utena, standing at the transporter's control panel,
scratched at the back of her head and admitted to herself that there
might be a slight flaw in her plan.
"I don't suppose either of you guys know how to operate one of
these," she said to Lucas and La Fontaine.
"Er... no," said Lucas.
"Mia?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Hmm." Utena searched the panel for a communications
interface. "Maybe I can raise Corwin and get him to talk me through
it... "
"Hang on a second, don't start pushing buttons at random,"
said a familiar voice from the ceiling, and a moment later a
ventilation grille fell to the floor with a mighty crash. Behind it,
Imra Ardeen and Wakaba Shinohara came down somewhat more gracefully.
They were dirty and rumpled, their clothes torn in a couple of places,
but they looked pleased with themselves.
"How the hell did you guys get in here?" Utena demanded.
"We came in through the reactor complex and up the power
transmission shafts to the machinery area," Wakaba replied, shrugging.
"That's crazy!"
Wakaba gave her old friend a look. "What, and walking right
up to the security station and slugging the guard wasn't?"
Utena conceded the point.
Imra, meanwhile, went to the transporter control panel,
brought it online, and said, "Wakaba, can you get Eadwards again and
tell him we're coming? I'd hate to wind up getting bounced back here
because they've closed their link to the network."
"Will do," Wakaba replied; she concentrated on her Lens for a
few moments, then said, "OK. As soon as we're through they're
shutting it down again, but you'd better set the panel to scramble
after we're gone anyway, just to make sure."
"Done," Imra replied. "Autodelay set. Energizing in five
seconds."
The six positioned themselves on the pads and waited. A
moment later, there came a pounding at the door and a muffled,
official-sounding voice.
"Relax," said Imra. "By the time he gets his override to
work, we'll be long gone... especially since he's having some trouble
remembering his code," she added with a sly little smile.
A moment later, they were gone.
The Earth district headquarters of the International Police
Organization was not actually in the city of Bangor, Maine, but rather
north of it, outside a tiny community called Alton. Bangor was the
nearest city anybody outside Maine would have any chance of
recognizing the name of, so it was called IPO HQ Bangor anyway. A lot
of people found it a bit odd that the IPO hadn't chosen to set their
planetary HQ up in a major city, or at least somewhere other than the
middle of nowhere; but that part of Maine had sentimental ties for the
Chief of the International Police, and anyway, it didn't matter much
where the compound was if it was equipped with aerospace facilities
and tied into the global transporter grid.
That grid delivered Utena and her party to the central
administration building, the only part of the complex still secure and
controlled by the Experts of Justice. Within a second after their
arrival was confirmed complete, the station's link to the GTG was cut
off permanently - by a technician with a fire axe - and Lensman
Eadwards welcomed them to the station.
The place was in the grip of a serious emergency, that much
was certain. The lights were red, as aboard a starship in battle, and
the sounds of the Earthforce tank artillery trying to breach the
defensive perimeter were audible in the distance. Blue-suited IPO
Service Division technicians ran here and there on inscrutable
errands. The PA system occasionally blared warning messages to
various sectors of the base or hailed specific squads of personnel to
reinforce same.
Shouting over the noise, Eadwards, a tall, sandy-haired,
balding man in early middle age, informed the six who had just arrived
from Toronto that they were starting the final pullout, but that
conditions at Titan weren't much better.
"Earthforce hasn't arrived in force yet, if you'll pardon the
expression," he said as he led them down one red-strobing corridor and
into another, "but they've got a fleet on the way and some advance
elements harassing the aerospace defense perimeter. Titan's Governor
General has mobilized the militia to back up our own forces there, but
once Earthforce's occupation fleet gets there... well... then we'll
probably have to fall back to Babylon 6 and blow the -Titan- gate
too."
"And abandon the people of Titan to their fate?" said Utena
angrily. "I thought you were a Lensman."
"The Klingons have a saying, Captain," Eadwards replied,
unoffended. "'Only a fool - '"
>Fights in a burning house,< said Utena in Klingonese. "I
know it." She looked grim, still angry.
"It sticks in my craw too," Eadwards assured her, "but how
would it help the Titanese for us to line up and get killed? There
are only a hundred of us; Earthforce is sending five thousand. We'll
hold as long as we can, but if it looks like we're going to be overrun
and wiped out, we'll have to pull back. It'd just be a waste of
personnel to try and push back a grey tide."
"Maybe," Utena replied, unconvinced. She glanced back, having
noticed that Imra had been silent throughout their grim little
discussion of her homeworld's fate. She looked calm, professional,
like she always did, and Utena was again glad to know her. The
captain offered her an attempt at a reassuring smile, which the
telepath accepted with good grace, and then they were at a large,
armored door which Eadwards was plying with a complex code.
"We've been opening the gate at ten-minute intervals," said
the Blue Lensman, "but for you nine, we'll do a special run."
Utena glanced around. "There are only six of us," she said.
Eadwards cracked his first smile of their short association.
As the giant power door ground open, he gestured to the three people
standing just inside it. Lucas and La Fontaine stood agape with
surprise for a moment, then rushed to greet their boss as Utena and
the others from the Valiant did likewise with Janice and Neal.
The greeting and the comparing of notes stopped momentarily,
though, as all six who had just beamed over from Toronto looked
further into the room and got their first look at a Babylon Foundation
stargate.
The room itself was unremarkable; it looked more like a hangar
than anything else, three stories high with drab metal walls and a
steel-raftered ceiling. In one corner, a cluster of computer
terminals were connected to massive cables that snaked across the
diamond-plate steel floor to a ramped pedestal which stood in the
center of the room. More cables draped from the ceiling and ran here
and there, connecting large, important-looking pieces of equipment to
other large, important-looking pieces of equipment.
And standing in the center, atop the pedestal, was an...
-artifact-. That was the only word any of them could think of to
describe it. It was a huge ring, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, and
it looked carved from some metal or mineral none of them recognized,
dark and gleaming with a peculiar, almost oily sheen. The ring was
divided into thirty-nine segments, each marked with a unique, peculiar
glyph. Seven triangular 'windows' studded its outer rim, including
one directly at the top.
"Whoa," said Utena. She had, after the last couple years of
her life, some experience with mystic artifacts and powers, and this,
to her, spoke of such things. It was the kind of thing she would
expect to see in Corwin's mother's garage.
Eadwards whistled through the clamor of the bustling room and
got the attention of a dark-skinned woman in technician's overalls who
stood in the middle of the cluster of computers.
"Jazmin!" he cried. "Fire it up! Special delivery."
The tech nodded and started giving instructions to her techs,
and a moment later, the chevron-shaped windows studding the gate
popped 'open' toward the center, and the glyph-marked section of the
gate started to turn inside its frame. The room began to fill with a
weird, subsonic, hackles-raising rumble. The gate stopped with one of
the symbols showing through the window at about the two-o'clock
position.
"Chevron One is holding," Jazmin announced; a moment later the
chevron snapped shut, and she added, "Chevron One is locked." The
gate held that pose for a moment; then the gate began turning once
more, seeking its next target for the next chevron around clockwise.
It did this five more times, each time with an increase in the
rumbling sound until finally Jazmin had to shout to be heard over it
as she reported the status of each chevron. Then it sought back to
its original position, stopping with an inverted 'V' topped by a small
circle in the top window.
"CHEVRON SEVEN IS HOLDING!" Jazmin bawled over the
now-nearly-deafening roar - but she never got to issue the second part
of the litany, because when Chevron Seven locked, the gate opened, and
nobody was paying a damn bit of attention to her status updates
anyway. Even the people who had seen the gate in action a thousand
times before, like Eadwards and Jazmin herself, had to just stop and
look at it as, with a shattering peak to its roar, it suddenly filled
with a seething vortex of silvery energy -
- and just as suddenly went silent except for a soft hum, the
energy within it becoming as placid and shimmery as a pond under
moonlight.
"... -Whoa-," said Utena, with a bit more feeling this time.
"Better get going," said Eadwards with a smile. "I know it
seems like the long way around, but you should be able to contact your
ship from Titan - Earthforce isn't in a position to jam communications
from there yet." The room shook, and Eadwards glanced at the ceiling
with a rueful expression. "We won't be far behind you at this rate."
"What about... this?" Utena asked, gesturing to the gate.
"You can't leave it here for -them- to find... "
"No," Eadwards replied, shaking his head sadly. "And we can't
get it out of here - so we'll have to destroy it. Now get moving! We
don't have much time."
Utena looked at him, looked at the gate, then back at
Eadwards, then nodded.
"Good luck, Lensman," she said.
"And to you, Captain," he replied. They saluted each other,
then Utena turned and led the others up the ramp to the gate's
threshold.
"This'll be a new experience," Wakaba observed wryly.
"I've done it before," Neal Krummell offered.
"Oh yeah? What's it like?"
"It's... well... it can't really be described."
"Oh. Well, that's useful," said Wakaba dryly.
Utena look at her distorted reflection in the silvery surface
of the gate for a moment, then squared herself and strode unflinchingly
through it.
Neal was right.
It couldn't really be described.
Kozue Kaoru was in desperate trouble, deadly danger, and she
well knew it. The spacecraft she was riding wore New Avalon registry
and was on record as the property of an International Police Space
Force officer - an officer currently splashed all over the police nets
for having eluded "lawful detention" in Toronto. What was more, she
was flying escort for a Network 23 reporter's transport.
Unlike ISN's in Paris, Earthforce Security had found Network
23's Sydney headquarters a tough nut to crack, mainly because
Australia-New Zealand, unlike France, was fighting back against the
sudden abolition of her remaining sovereignty. The Royal Australasian
Air Force was fighting pitched and losing battles in the skies over
Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Auckland, and ANZAC was dug in on the
ground, costing Earthforce time and blood for every foot of ground
they gave up. Though this show of heroism was not solely for the
benefit of Network 23, the network was nonetheless benefitting by it,
using the time the Australasian forces were buying them to evacuate
the planet.
Their big transports were leaving the system unmolested;
Earthforce had too much to do, and anyway, the transports belonged not
to the network but to their chief sponsor, the Neimoidian Trade
Federation megacorporation ZikZak. The Earth Alliance didn't want a
war with the Trade Federation, and as such, they held back from
attacking the transports, even though it galled them to let Network
23, a consistent thorn in their side, get away. Individual personnel
of that network, not traveling under the protective wing of ZikZak,
were fair game - and John Trussell had made enemies in the government
during his time as a reporter.
All this went toward explaining why the Earth defense grid
identified both Swordfish II and the Morning Sun as targets, and why
Kozue Kaoru and Jung Freud were up against it.
/* The Black Crowes "Kickin' My Heart Around" _By Your Side_ */
Kozue was hunched over the scarlet fighter's controls,
throttle grip twisted wide open, her teeth gritted in a predatory
smile. Deadly danger or not, she was having the time of her life.
She barrel-rolled the Swordfish around a missile satellite, raking it
with the fighter's main armament, the four blaster cannons mounted in
her T-paneled wingtips. Utena hadn't been anticipating trouble when
she launched that afternoon, so the missile rails on the outsides of
those wingtips were empty.
So aside from the heavy gun slung underneath, the blasters
were Kozue's only armament - but with any luck, they would be all she
needed. There were no fighters up here for her to contend with since
she'd left the aero interceptors behind in the atmosphere, only these
automated weapons platforms. The interdictor network was still in
place, of course, and it had gone live the moment the Morning Sun was
identified by the defense grid, but that was all right. They weren't
planning to go FTL and leave the system anyway. All they had to do
was reach Mars.
Of course, the Earthforce Orbital Patrol knew that too.
Kozue thumbed a brief burst out of the afterburner, hurling
the Swordfish II to even greater speed, and strafed a pair of blaster
mines, putting them out of commission a moment before the Morning Sun
would have reached their line of fire. Jung reciprocated by using the
Sun's ion cannons to disable still another missilesat, which had been
perhaps a second from achieving target lock on the Swordfish when she
did so.
On the bridge of the Valiant, Corwin Ravenhair paced and
swore, not even bothering to feel embarrassed about it now. Anthy,
off to the side, eyed him worriedly. She knew his patience and
prudence would have limits - he was so much like Utena in that respect
that it sometimes alarmed her - and that if either of the small ships
fighting for their lives on the much-magnified main viewer got into
serious trouble, Corwin would abandon the sanctuary of Martian orbit
to go to their aid, consequences be damned.
What was more, she couldn't honestly say that he would be
wrong to do so.
For Corwin, the most agonizing part was the not knowing. How
many of them were with Truss? How many still on Earth? Who was
flying the Swordfish II? He didn't think it was Utena; he wasn't sure
he could explain precisely -how- he had formed that impression, but
nevertheless he didn't think it was. That left Kozue as the most
likely candidate, Kozue who had no actual combat experience, but who
had enjoyed the combat simulations most of all the simulated trials
she had undergone.
If that -was- Kozue, she was doing well, damn well. If she
had been alone, she would have cleared the grid and made it to Mars
without a problem. But she wasn't alone; she had to hang back, circle
around, and keep pace with the slower Morning Sun.
A hotrod sleeper the modified Lambda-class might be, made over
by a team of engineers at the same shipyard where the lackluster Rigel
Yards Danube-class runabout had been transformed into the estimable
Kennebec-class gunboat, but she was still a sleeper. The requirement
of leaving the outer hull unmodified had limited the power of the
sublight engines that could be installed, and so her sublight speed
was one area in which her redesigners had never been quite satisfied.
Jung Freud was now chafing under that same limitation. She
pounded the heel of her hand on the instrument panel, trying to wring
more speed out of the Morning Sun's laboring Dual Line ion engines
with sheer force of will. The hopped-up shuttle was maneuverable
enough, and that was a saving grace, but still - at this speed, a
measly ninety megalights, they would never clear this stinking
blasterfield. But she dared not strip back her shield or weapon
recharge rates - the gain in speed wouldn't be enough to counterbalance
the loss of defensive strength.
All she could do was hang on, fly her figurative pants off,
and hope it and Kozue Kaoru's coverage would be enough. The
blue-haired girl was a damn good throttle jockey, Jung had to admit
it; but her fighter's main advantage was speed, not firepower, and
having to keep pace and cover the Sun was canceling that advantage
out. Kozue could dart ahead to take out upcoming obstructions, but
then she had to double back to cover the Sun's flanks...
... and here, the wailing alarm on Jung's short-range sensor
panel informed her, came the -next- big problem, crossing the lunar
defense perimeter on its way in to give them a pain in the neck. It
was one of Earthforce's old Myrmidon-class destroyers, the pre-Corporate
War predecessor to the Hyperion class: too antiquated for frontline
service, shorn of her FTL drives and converted into a planetary monitor.
She was inbound on an intercept course, and even a cursory look at the
sensors told Jung that she would catch them.
"Kaoru, we've got a big problem," she told her commset.
"I see it," Kozue replied. "Can you outrun it?"
"I don't think so," Jung replied. "Go on without us, there's
no need for them to catch us both."
"Like hell," Kozue replied, winging the Swordfish over. "I'm
not leaving my brother behind! If we can't outrun them, we'll just
have to take them out."
"Take them OUT, are you CRAZY?" Jung blurted. She caught
Truss, in the copilot's seat next to her, looking at the ceiling with
an I'm-not-going-to-say-anything look, but she was too busy being
aghast that she'd met someone with less regard for her own safety than
Jung herself. "That's a Myrmidon-class destroyer. She outguns us a
hundred to one."
"Never tell me the odds," Kozue replied, the vicious grin
obvious in her voice.
Captain Edwin Planck of the EAS Hieronymus expected an easy
grab with these two. The fighter would be tough, but his ship's own
Starfuries could take care of that; he was mainly concerned with the
shuttle, which he'd been informed was carrying fugitives from not one
but two separate casualty incidents in Toronto.
"Get a tractor on that Lambda-class the instant she's in
range," he snapped to his weapons officer.
"Aye aye, sir," replied Lieutenant Fredrika Bloggs.
The outcome of that order came to Jung's attention, and that
of everyone else aboard the Morning Sun, quite rapidly; in the process
of winging over to line up on the destroyer for a proton torpedo
attack, the Morning Sun shuddered, her controls went dead, and her
engines began laboring more intensely to no visible avail.
"Dammit!" Jung snarled. "They've uprated the tractors on
this bastard. We can't break loose. Kaoru! Can you do something
about that tractor projector?"
"I'm a little busy right now!" Kozue replied, jamming in some
thrust-vectoring to port and barely avoiding a pair of concussion
missiles from one of the Hieronymus's Starfuries.
"Then I guess it's time to dust off the secret weapon," Jung
grumbled. She cut her engines and touched the maneuvering thrusters,
swinging the Morning Sun so that she was being reeled back to the
Hieronymus head-on. Then she bottomed the weapon and shield recharge
rates, thumbed a large red-and-white-striped switch next to the
weapons panel into battery, and waited, her face betraying no
emotion. Truss, beside her, was looking intently out the front
window, his own face similarly blank.
"Al, tell our passengers to hold onto something," said Jung
through her teeth, and the hologram vanished from behind them to
report to the wardroom and relay the message.
One second later, the green light above the switch Jung had
thrown came on, and she reached to the panel and hit the key
innocuously marked 'MODE SELECT'.
The twin heavy naval turbolasers concealed in the Morning
Sun's wingroots - weapons normally deployed only on capital ships -
blared scarlet fire with a noise that rattled the Substance-class
scoutship's whole spaceframe. Their barrage raced back along the
Earthforce destroyer's tractor beam's lines of force, through the gap
in her shields, plowed into the beam projector, and blasted it and a
sizable chunk of the forward docking assembly all to hell.
At the same instant, Jung was throwing the Morning Sun's
sublight engines to 110% power in reverse. The shuttle bucked and
shivered, her engines howling against the pull of the destroyer's
tractor for the half-second before the beam winked out. Then she
hurtled backward as if released from a spring, flinging the flight
crew against their straps and almost dumping the unsecured passengers
into a heap against the front bulkhead.
Jung hauled back on her flight yoke, pulling the Sun's nose up
and over, and raked the Hieronymus's nose with turbofire as she did
so, just for good measure; then, at the peak of the reverse Immelmann,
she jammed the throttles past full ahead and twisted the Morning Sun
into a tight corkscrew roll that sent her haring away from the wounded
destroyer amid a fusillade of hasty, inaccurate cannon fire.
Kozue saw her redheaded comrade kick the Earthforce ship in
the crotch and whooped with delight, then flung the Swordfish II into
a tight split-S and blasted one of her four Starfury opponents to
glowing bits. She offered the pilot a cheery wave as she streaked
past his ejection capsule, dove back under the Morning Sun's path, and
erased a big Class 54 torpedo platform with the asteroid racer's
Devastator-class plasma cannon.
Corwin, on the bridge of the Valiant, crowed in triumph as
well, as did Klaang, and so did a number of the ship's company
watching on the big screen down in the lunchroom - but their
exuberance was short-lived, as the destroyer gathered herself up from
her shock and charged after the fleeing shuttle. Her weapons fire
settled down, becoming metronomic and accurate, and four more fighters
were launched from her bays.
"Aw, -slag-," said Corwin as the Morning Sun's shields started
to flare first blue, then green. "All right, dammit, that's enough!"
He sat down at the helm station. "Saionji, thank the Martians for
their hospitality and tell 'em we're leaving."
"I hate to say it," Jung gritted as the Morning Sun shuddered
under fire, "but I think we're out of tricks. I guess they've decided
that capturing us isn't essential."
"Well," Kozue replied, her voice tight with anger, "they're by
God gonna know they were in a fight!" As she spoke, the Swordfish II
spiraled through Jung's field of vision, wingtip blasters lashing
another Starfury out of the sky.
"Amen to that, sister," Jung replied, throwing the Morning
Sun's secondary weapons into overcharge mode.
A moment later, as the Morning Sun's aft shields were failing
and Corwin was reaching for the warp controls and cursing his too-long
hesitation, another ship suddenly dealt itself into the game.
Two dozen kilometers off the Hieronymus's port bow, a Romulan
Warbird-class destroyer with Imperial Gamilon markings suddenly
appeared out of nowhere. The Gamilon Crown Starship Lorica issued no
challenge, transmitted no warning. Princess Dessler's personal
transport let her Mark IX heavy plasma weapon say all that she had to
say on the matter. One moment, the Hieronymus was panting at the
Morning Sun's heels, turbolasers screaming, ready for the kill.
The next, it was as though she had never existed.
"Target destroyed, Your Highness," reported Commander Jethan
blandly.
"Chief Ravenhair of the Valiant sends his felicitations,"
Sub-Commander Rokar added with a little smile, fingertip to his
commlink earbug.
Amanda smiled. "Tell him I will be pleased to accept them in
person once we reach Titan," she replied.
Rokar duly relayed the message, then chuckled and said, "You
appear to have flustered him, Your Highness."
"Excellent," Amanda said.
Rokar, still smiling, turned back to his combination
communications and sensor panel - and then the smile was erased from
his face by what he saw there.
"Commander!" he cried. "I'm showing a coolant leak and
burnout creepage in the Morning Sun's reactor control systems. She's
taken two direct hits to her engine spaces and it looks like she's
heading for an overload!"
Jethan spat a nasty oath. "Helm, get us as close as you
dare," he said, then thumbed his intercom controls. "Engineer Vikaris
to the transporter room!"
"Isn't there anything you can do?" asked Truss.
"If there were," Jung snapped, "don't you think I'd do it?!"
She was working the engine status panel frantically anyway, trying to
pull some rabbit out of the hat, but it looked very much as though
there wasn't a hat to pull from. "See if you can get the Lorica or
Valiant on the comm, maybe one of them can - "
Chill dislocation washed over Jung, and the next thing she
knew she was falling - but not very far; only the distance from where
her seat had been to where the deck of the Lorica's transporter room
was. It was undignified, and it hurt a little, to sprawl on the floor
that way, but it was better than getting blown up. She sat up quickly
and looked around; all around her, the rest of the Morning Sun's
company were scattered in similar positions, rubbing various parts of
their bodies which had had unscheduled encounters with the transporter
platform's hard deck.
Behind the control pedestal, Engineer Vikaris smiled. A good
job of work for a hurry; she'd even gotten the droids and the core
module for the AI. No doubt the latter was a bit confused by the fact
that all his sensory inputs had just gone dead and he'd switched to
battery power, but she felt he'd agree that the alternative was worse.
She patted the console happily. Those high-resolution pattern imaging
sensors were the best improvement the Gamilons had helped her make to
her ship, as far as she was concerned right now.
Truss and the others got to their feet, assembled near the
intercom display panel by the door, and watched the Morning Sun's
fiery death with somber expressions. The reporter sighed and put a
hand on his pilot's shoulder.
"She was a good ship," he said. "Got us out of a lot of tight
spaces."
"Including this one," Jung agreed, nodding. "She couldn't get
us through the grid, but she got us off the planet... "
"... and without that, where would we be?" said Moose
MacEchearn.
"Yeah," said Jung. "Exactly."
"Wait a minute," said Truss. "Did you just say something nice
about that ship? Like, in front of witnesses?"
Jung gave him a half-hearted dirty look, but said nothing.
"Would somebody please get on the radio," said Miki Kaoru
pragmatically, "and let my sister know I'm alive before she tries to
take on the Defense Perimeter Control Complex all by herself?"
Nanami Jinnai felt very, very out of place. Being Japanese,
she was accustomed to order, neatness, things in their places. The
Big Time TV studios - which happened to be a small starship - were the
very antithesis of that. They were a confused jumble of half-baked
AV equipment, clothes, unopened mail, stacks of recording media, and
unidenfiable widgets. Oh, it wasn't -filth-; there was no half-eaten
food or dirt anyway. It was just that the whole ship was a big pile
of... -junk-.
She'd heard of Big Time TV, of course. It was a pirate
station that broadcast illegally on a variety of unused frequencies,
depending on the time of day. There was a regular cottage industry on
the Solarnet keeping track of when and where Big Time would be on,
because despite its outlaw nature - or maybe because of it - the
station was wildly popular. It mainly showed old music videos and
action movies, and its sole staffer, the gruff but cheerful "Blank
Reg", provided droll commentary between tracks. The EA's
Communications Ministry had been trying without success to track down
Big Time for over a decade.
And now, as a passenger aboard the Big Time ship, Nanami knew
why: the channel operated out of an old Klingon ship, one that was
equipped with a cloaking device. Perhaps the Orbital Patrol could
have found it - it was an antique, after all - if they had looked for
it, but the Ministry of Communications had never thought of having
them look. The thought had never occurred to anyone just how Big Time
might be managing to hide its station so effectively.
What a story this would make, Nanami thought, if only the
world it would've made a good story in still existed.
She got up from the chair where Edison had left her panting
for breath in the scramble to get offplanet, went up the ship's 'neck'
to the bridge, and there found Edison and another, larger man bent
over the navigation console. When they heard the power door open for
Nanami and then close behind her, they turned, and Nanami got her
second surprise.
The man standing with Edison was big and broad, with muscular
arms, thick grey hair and a grizzled beard. He was wearing ratty
jeans, engineer's boots, and a t-shirt that read PISS OFF in large,
friendly letters; there was a spiked dog collar fastened around his
thick neck and he had tattoos running down both arms. What really
surprised her about him, though, was that like the ship itself, he was
a Klingon.
"Hullo, love!" he declared in a gravelly, British-sounding
voice, surprising Nanami yet again. With a big, friendly grin on his
pleasantly ugly face, he ambled across the bridge and pumped the young
reporter's hand up and down. "Welcome aboard the Big Time. I'm Reg."
"... -You're- Blank Reg?" Nanami blurted, but of course it was
a stupid question; she'd have known that voice anywhere.
"Sure am," replied Reg cheerily. "Owner o' the Big Time,
operator an' sole proprietor o' Big Time Television, Makin' Tomorrow
Seem Like Yesterday." (He pronounced it "yistiddy".)
"Uh... pleased to meet you," she said, falling back on the
training of her childhood and bowing with her hands folded in front of
her. "I'm Nanami Jinnai."
"Glad t'meetcha, Nanami," Reg said, his accent plunking an 'r'
into her name after the second 'a'. "Edison an' I were just decidin'
where t'go next. Can't go back t'Earth, that's certain. Edison
reckons Network 23's headin' for Babylon 6, at least f'the time
bein'."
"Well... I guess we should go there, then," Nanami said, when
it dawned on her that her opinion was being asked.
"I guess so," said Edison with a faint smile. "Well, Reg, you
think this old crate can get us there in one piece?"
"You watch, Mr. Carter," said Reg with a grin. He sat down at
the helm and started punching buttons, some of which acknowledged his
efforts, others of which did not. "She'll 'ave us to B6 before we
have time t'get bored." Turning in his seat, he addressed Nanami
again. "So you'll be workin' for Edison, then?"
"I... I guess so," said Nanami. "I can't go back to ISN...
whatever the government's doing to it, it's not going to be someplace
I'd want to work any more. Come to that, I can't go back to Earth...
I guess I'm a fugitive."
"Eh, well, that's not s'bad," said Reg with an offhanded
shrug. "I been a fugitive for goin' on 60 years. It's really very
liberatin'. Well, listen. If y'want an alternative t'bein' Carter's
camera slave," the Klingon added with a grin, "why not come work
f'me?"
"For -you-?" Nanami replied, incredulous.
"Yeah," Reg replied. "I been thinkin' of settin' up a news
department. Y'know - Independent Coverage You Can Trust, that kinda
thing. How'd y'like t'be it?"
"The whole department?"
"We're a compact operation," Reg replied with a more-or-less-
straight face.
"Well, I don't know," said Nanami thoughtfully. "What kind of
pay are we talking about? A girl's got to make a living."
The ad-hoc Earthforce fleet banged together to effect the
seizure (or 'liberation', as the official line had it) of Titan wasn't
in any great hurry. Spearheaded by the cruiser Agamemnon, it was
loafing along at sublight speed, not bothering to go to warp or enter
metaspace for the jaunt out to the orbit of Saturn. What was the
hurry? The Titanese weren't going anywhere, and the International
Police holed up there couldn't expect relief from Epsilon Eridani for
at least another two hours.
Captain John Sheridan sat on the bridge of his vessel, the
fingers of one hand wrapped around his chin, and considered the
situation. He didn't like it - something about the reasons for the
government's declaration of martial law and the subsequent annexation
of the free territories rang hollow for him. Still, he was a soldier,
not a statesman - that was his father's province - and soldiers did as
they were told; and so Sheridan was considering the defenses of Titan
and the possible resistance that world might offer.
"It seems to me," mused the general staff officer standing to
Sheridan's left, "that this will be fairly easy. Wouldn't you say,
John?"
"I don't know how you define 'easy', General Parker," Sheridan
replied, "but it seems to -me- that it's going to be pretty damned
messy. The Titanese value their independence quite highly. They
won't back down. Our forces will have to beat them down and take
their world by force. It's liable to be a very bloody fight."
"Well, certainly, there will be -some- resistance," General
Alvin Parker replied offhandedly. "But even if they resist to the
utmost of their capabilities, they can't hope to do more than cost us
an hour or two. Look at the mathematics. They have trivial aerospace
defenses - a dozen fighters, perhaps, and those outdated - and their
ground forces are equally laughable. Except for the Experts of
Justice they have no army at all. A company of Destroids will stomp
them flat. We won't even have to send down most of the troops until
it's all over. We can reserve them for the occupation."
"If the people of Titan are pleading for our help in
overthrowing their Zeta Cygnan oppressors," said Sheridan without an
outward trace of irony, "why do we need an occupation force?"
Parker chuckled. "You're a smartass, son," he said. "I don't
mind, but you want to watch who you show that to. Could get you in
trouble someday. Anyway, you know as well as I do that this isn't
about liberation, whatever the politicians say about it. It's about
taking back something that should've been ours all along."
"Even if the people there don't want us?" Sheridan replied.
Parker gave him a sidelong look, a silent warning that he'd
overstepped, and said gruffly, "Their opinions don't enter into it."
Then he turned and strode away. "I'll be in the planning room. Call
me when we're within dropship range." He left without waiting for an
acknowledgement, so Sheridan didn't give him one.
Instead the captain turned back to his main viewer and
murmured to himself, "We'll see what the Titanese have to say about
that."
"Beg pardon, sir?" asked his helm officer.
"Nothing, Mr. Carroway. Steady as she goes."
On Earth, Colonel Rupert Loyola was feeling pretty pleased
with himself. He and his combined-arms regiment had reduced
International Police Headquarters in less than six hours, his
hovertanks decimating the automated defenses while his infantry
breached the perimeter and swarmed into the outbuildings. Now he was
personally present for the moment when the sappers brought down the
main door to the administration building. He stood behind a portable
blast shield, arms folded behind his back, gripping his swagger stick,
as infantrymen rushed through the blown doors to meet the expected IPO
resistance in the lobby.
There was none. They entered to silence, except for the
clatter of their boots on the floor and the subtle whine of their
charged plasma weapons. After a few moments, the captain in charge of
the assault team came out and reported.
"The place is deserted, sir," she reported. "They must have
gone underground, into the maintenance tunnels and whatnot. We'll
find them."
Loyola nodded. "Very good, Captain Montano. Proceed."
It took half an hour for Montano's men to determine that the
administration building was absolutely vacant. There was a heavy
blast door shielding the entrance to the basement, however, and she
was confident that they would find the beaten International Police
holed up behind it. Loyola gave the order for it to be blown, and
blown it was.
But there was no one down there, and as the soldiers entered
the basement, the PA system suddenly announced in a pleasant voice,
"Attention. Unauthorized access to the high security zone.
This facility will self-destruct in five Standard minutes. Please
evacuate the facility."
Montano glanced at Colonel Loyola. "Sir?"
Loyola scowled. "Self-destruct? A self-destruct device
powerful enough to destroy this base would lay waste to the surrounding
area. The International Police would never endanger the nearby towns.
It's a bluff. Continue your sweep."
Montano did so, though she didn't look entirely convinced by
her commander's logic. A search of the basement and subbasement also
revealed no personnel. As they searched, and the PA system announced
the declining time every thirty seconds, Captain Montano grew more and
more visibly apprehensive.
They found nothing of interest in the basement except one
enormously armored door, sturdier by far than even the one barring
entrance to the building itself. It took Montano's sapper teams fully
two minutes to breach it, by which point the PA system was saying
there were two more minutes left.
What Captain Ingrid Montano found inside that room erased all
misgivings about Colonel Loyola's assessment of the PA system's
message - and replaced them with the dead certainty that the colonel
was wrong. She ran back to the corridor, shouting for her men to
follow her.
"Colonel!" Montano cried as she reached him. "We have to get
out of here -now-!"
"What are you babbling about?" asked Loyola. "Straighten
yourself up and address your superiors correctly, Captain!"
"There's something in there, sir," said Montano, trying to
fight down panic. "I don't know what it is, but I do know that
whatever it is, the IPO would never just let us have it. You can tell
that just by looking at it. That message is genuine and we HAVE TO
GET OUT OF HERE!"
Scowling more deeply, Loyola reared back a hand and slapped
her across the face. "Get ahold of yourself!" he barked. "You're
acting like a cadet on her first mission."
"And YOU'RE acting like a chipmunk licking the peanut butter
off a mousetrap!" Montano snapped. "Investigate it yourself if you're
so certain it's safe. If you live," she added with a humorless laugh,
"you can have me shot!"
Then she pushed past him and ran, shouting for her men to
follow her. Some of them, trusting their captain's intuition more
than the colonel's bravado, followed; others waffled. A few raised
their weapons, but Loyola waved them down.
"Let her run," said the colonel with a condescendingly
merciful air. "Let's go see what's got her so spooked."
He ducked through the hole in the door and pulled up short.
"What in the world... ?" he wondered, looking up at the
gleaming, inert ring of the stargate. As the PA system counted down
from ten, Loyola started to laugh at the absurdity of it all. -This-
was what had frightened Montano, an ostensibly stable officer, so
badly that she'd defied his orders, insulted him, and deserted in the
face of the enemy? Why, it was nothing more than a -
"... Zero."
A dome shield suddenly resolved itself over the base, its
diameter equal to the diagonal of the square described by the outer
perimeter fence. Ingrid Montano and the few soldiers who had followed
her had just passed this point when the shield appeared, erupting from
the ground from a projector track which had been concealed beneath the
earth. So powerful was this curtain of energy that it sliced several
armored vehicles which had been parked partway across it clean in half
as it rippled upward into the sky to meet at a point directly above
the exact center of the base.
This shield could be so very powerful because it was only
intended to stand for thirty seconds. It was powered by fast-decaying
instant-action chemical batteries originally developed to power the
shielding of deep solar probes, which had only to reach the centers of
stars, transmit back their information, and then surrender to the
nuclear fire.
In this case, its purpose was not to withstand fires without,
but rather to contain those within. One hundredth of a second after
the field reached full intensity, the fusion reactor buried at the
center of IPO Headquarters, Earth, went supercritical, becoming
essentially a five-megaton thermonuclear weapon, and exploded as
such. The perimeter troops and Montano's survivors flinched, some of
them flash-blinded, as the dome over the IPO base suddenly became a
hemisphere of hard white light.
The shield contained the explosion completely, its inner
surface acting like the walls of a reverberating blast furnace to
magnify the effects of the explosion on its contents. When it finally
abated and the glow faded, nothing remained inside the perimeter but
glowing glass.
The shield, having served its purpose, winked out, and the
stunned survivors recoiled from the intense heat radiating from the
blast site.
Ingrid Montano limped to an armored personnel carrier, sat
down tiredly on the fender, reached inside for the radio, and reported
the death of Colonel Loyola.
The news of the IPO base's self-destruction reached General
Parker as the fleet was arriving in the general vicinity of Titan. He
stormed out of the planning room with a face like a thundercloud, and
John Sheridan sighed with inward resignation.
"By God," rumbled Parker, "those International Police people
have a lot of nerve. Look at this!" he said, and thrust a printout
into Sheridan's hands.
Sheridan read it, then read it again, then handed it back.
"Well," he said, "I guess they're serious about not welcoming
trespassers."
"One of these days that so-called wit of yours is going to get
you into a lot of trouble, boy," grumbled Parker. Sheridan let pass
the fact that the general had just called a thirty-six-year-old line
officer 'boy'; it was just the way Parker talked when he was annoyed.
"Just taking Titan's not going to be enough now," the general went on,
pacing the deck beside Sheridan's chair. "We're going to have to make
an example out of these people."
"Ah... what people, General? The Titanese don't have anything
to do with this."
"No, not the Titanese, John," Parker snapped. "The IPO
garrison. Their headquarters in Beltane. We're going to have to hit
Government Center with everything we've got, take that place before
they can set up a similar surprise for us there. One of our officers
who saw the basement of the IPO HQ on Earth and got out alive says
there was something weird in the basement, probably what they blew the
place up to keep us from having a look at, and by God if they've got
something similar on Titan I'm going to get it! Deploy the fleet for
a full surface assault. I'm not going to play around with these
bastards at all."
At that moment, a sensor alarm and a hailing annunciator went
off at the same time. The comm officer was slightly quicker on the
draw, pre-empting the sensorman's report by saying,
"IPO starship is hailing us, Captain," at the same time an
image of a Defiant-class destroyer appeared on the main viewer.
"How the -hell-?" blurted General Parker.
"Put them on," said Sheridan. The screen beeped and switched
to the view of a Defiant-class bridge - one which appeared to be
crewed entirely by two teenage girls and a Klingon.
The one in the captain's seat - a tall, slim girl with
piercing blue eyes, long, slightly feathery pink hair and good legs -
looked challengingly out of the screen at Sheridan.
"This is Captain Utena Tenjou of the International Police
Starship Valiant. I'm not any good at quoting chapter and verse from
regulation and international law, so I'm going to make this as simple
as possible: Get lost."
Parker spluttered. He had a daughter about the same age as
this girl back home, and she would -never- have dared speak to him in
such a fashion. As such, he didn't know how to react.
Sheridan, on the other hand, smiled slightly and replied,
"Can't do that, I'm afraid. Captain John Sheridan, Earthforce. We
have orders to secure this area and deploy our ground forces to assist
in the transition of the Titan Colony back to the lawful
administration of the Earth Alliance. Do I take it from your tone
that you intend to oppose us?"
Utena nodded, an I-knew-it expression crossing her face.
"Uh-huh," she said, "you're gonna play it that way. OK, Captain, it's
your funeral." (Sheridan thought that was a little rich, coming from
someone whose tiny destroyer was looking down the barrel of a
Nova-class battleship and her escort fleet, but he didn't comment;
something in the girl's eyes told him she meant every word of it.)
"Cross the Titan defense perimeter and we're in a shooting war,
Captain Sheridan. If you think I'm bluffing, come ahead."
"I don't think you're bluffing," said Sheridan seriously.
"Which is too bad. Good luck, Captain. This is nothing personal."
Utena looked back at him for a moment, then nodded. "You'll
excuse me," she replied, "if I don't wish you the same - but I
appreciate the gesture." She made a slight movement of her hand, and
the Klingon at the comm console cut the connection.
"They're going to take us on by themselves? That one little
ship? They're insane!" said Parker.
"No, I don't think so," said Sheridan grimly. "Just
committed. Agamemnon to all ships: Deploy for surface assault."
With Kozue Kaoru back behind the helm of the Valiant where she
belonged, and Zefram Cochrane and his team keeping the engines running
smoothly, that vessel was at the peak of her fighting trim. Since
their engagement with the Amar, Kozue had mastered the complexities of
simultaneous weapon and helm control, eliminating the need for her
navigator to double as guided weapons officer. Since they were
fighting a defensive battle over a planet, a navigator wasn't
particularly needed, and so Miki wasn't at his post.
Instead he was below, with Kaitlyn, Azalynn, Moose, Dorothy,
Liza, Edward Tivrusky and Ein in the room at the top of Government
Center's main tower. This was a big, airy room which usually served
as the conference chamber for the Board of Regents who helped the
Governor administer the colony on behalf of the Zeta Cygnan
government. Its windows could be opened and it had a balcony that
looked out over the central square of the city of Beltane, for
announcements to the public.
On top of the conference table in the center of the room, Liza
Shustal sat cross-legged, surrounded by a mass of wires, amplifiers,
mixers, signal processors and interface equipment. Edward and Ein
were underneath that same table, connecting cables from all that to
other cables that ran across the room, out the door and down the
stairs to the next floor down. Both had their wearable computer
arrays jacked into the system. Still more cables ran from Liza's nest
across the room and out onto the balcony, where the Art of Noise had
just finished setting up and testing their instruments.
Under the bright blue early morning sky, the plaza was empty
save for units of the Beltane Municipal Police, who were assembling to
serve as an absolute last line of defense for their government. The
ordinary people of Titan were in their homes, glued to their
televisions, watching as John Trussell covered the coming crisis from
the steps of Government Center itself.
"OK, Edward," said Liza, "we're set. Patch us in."
"Working!" Edward sang out gleefully. She and Ein plied their
computers, making all manner of beep and buzz, and a few moments
later, Edward sang again, "Ready!"
Liza grinned and raised her eyes to the balcony. Kaitlyn
surveyed her band, then came around behind Dorothy's drum riser,
nodded to Liza, and went back up to take her place behind her
keyboards. Liza grinned again, then thumbed a key on the commset next
to her.
"Studio 7-G to Valiant," she said. "Ready when you are."
"Roger, 7-G, stand by," Klaang's voice replied, and he left
the channel open.
In the background, Liza could hear Utena's voice saying
faintly, "But I appreciate the gesture."
There was a brief, tense, anticipatory pause.
Then Utena's voice rang out from the speaker, this time
clearly directed at Liza and her companions:
"Valiant to Studio 7-G. Sound Goldfish Warning."
/* The Alarm "Rockin' in the Free World" _Raw_ */
Liza looked up, but Kaitlyn had already heard. She raised a
hand, then dropped it, and her band gathered itself and hurled down
the gauntlet, in the form of a pounding, angry beat that thundered
forward mainly on the power of Dorothy's drums and Moose's bass. It
was an angry song, much angrier than those the Art of Noise usually
played, but today was a special day, and as Kate leaned to the
microphone in front of her keyboards she gave her voice its full share
of that anger as she sang:
"There's colors on the street
Red white and blue
People shuffling their feet
People sleeping in their shoes
There's a warning sign on the road ahead
And there's a lot of people saying they'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan but I am to them
So I try to forget it any way I can
"Keep on rockin' in the Free World
Keep on rockin' in the Free World
Keep on rockin' in the Free World
Keep on rockin' in the Free World"
Above and around Beltane, the Earthforce assets assembling for
conquest paused momentarily in confusion as the music roared through
their tactical communications networks. Nothing they did seemed to
stop it. This was a tactic many of the attackers had heard of before;
started by the Confederate Freespacers back in the early twenty-first
century, it had come to be known as a "goldfish warning" after the
horrible song the Freespacers originally played when they did it. The
Earthforce personnel involved today had to concede that the
International Police were doing it with better music, but still, it
was terribly annoying and disconcerting to have their communications
replaced by music.
The defenders of Titan, on the other hand, seemed energized by
it. Valiant was joined by the Titan Defense Force's small contingent
of Incom T-65F Dragonfly starfighters, their pilots grooving to the
beat and identifying with the message. They engaged Earthforce's
hordes of Starfuries, gravely outnumbered but game for the fight, as
the Valiant plunged into the heart of the fleet, weapons blazing,
using all of her speed and agility to good advantage.
The dropships carrying the Earthforce ground assets got past
Valiant, since she was too busy maneuvering to avoid the fleet's
massed firepower to do anything about them - but that was part of the
plan. As she watched the first quartet, three troopships and an
automated Destroid carrier, pass the orbital perimeter and head for
the atmosphere, Utena punched a key on her command panel and said,
"Heads up, Corwin - groundpounders heading your way."
On the surface of Titan, standing in front of a line of TDF
gravtanks, Corwin Ravenhair watched the horizon through a pair of
electrobinoculars, then let them fall to his chest and nodded in
satisfaction. He turned to the man next to him, a tall, burly fellow
in the uniform of an IPO Tactical Division colonel, and said,
"OK, here they come. I'll keep their Destroids occupied. You
deploy your tanks against their conventional armor and see what you
can do about bottling up their infantry."
Colonel Ordo Genreen, combined force commander, gave the young
man a skeptical look. He knew this Ravenhair kid was a Lensman, and
the Chief's son to boot, but he was planning to go up against a
company of Earthforce Destroids by -himself-? Genreen had heard
stories about the kid's father that made him believe -he- could have
accomplished such a feat, but this kid... well, Colonel Genreen didn't
see it.
It was with perfect confidence, though, that the black-haired
young man went out to meet the enemy, walking with easy, unconcerned
strides until he was twenty yards or more in front of the TDF and IPO
combined forces. On the other side of the plain, near the ridgeline,
the Earthforce Destroid company could be seen forming up, having
disembarked from their dropship.
Colonel Genreen's aide leaned over and whispered, "Sir?
Should we - "
Genreen cut him off with a sharp gesture of his hand. If the
kid wasn't up to the task he'd just volunteered himself for, they'd
all known soon enough.
Corwin stood for a moment, hands in his trouser pockets, the
summer breeze across the meadow ruffling his shirttails. It was a
nice day and a nice place, and a great pity that he had to ruin it all
with violence... but that was the way things went, sometimes.
He raised his wristwatch to his lips and declared in a clear,
strong voice:
"BIG O! It's SHOWTIME!"
For a moment - just long enough for Colonel Genreen to wonder
if the kid really was off his rocker - nothing happened.
Then the ground underfoot shuddered, actually moving strongly
enough to jostle the men inside the grounded panzers slightly. The
vibration grew stronger, radiating toward them from the place where
Corwin stood; then, just in front of him, the earth split open, clumps
of sod, soil and rocks falling away into a great black sinkhole.
A moment later, a titanic shape began to rise from that hole.
A great black head, grim-faced and copper-helmeted, and broad armored
shoulders arose, and Corwin, with a gleeful grin on his face, jumped
lightly over the edge into the hole next to the monstrous machine.
Genreen cried an incoherent warning sound and took a half-step
forward, but then Corwin reappeared - kneeling in the palm of one huge
black iron hand, grinning even wider.
As it rose further and further from the ground, the biggest
Destroid anyone there had ever seen, the massive machine raised its
hand to its chest, depositing Corwin in the open hatchway below its
head. This hatchway then sealed behind him, and as the robot came to
a halt standing fully at ground level, towering over the TDF troops,
it paused for a moment, silent.
Then its eyes glowed bright yellow and it shifted slightly, as
though strength had just flowed into its limbs. It regarded the
oncoming Earthforce Destroids - now pausing to regroup and assess this
new wrinkle on the battlefield - for several seconds.
Slowly and deliberately, as befit its great mass, it raised
one massive, powerfully-built forearm, clenching its fist. Then it
raised the other arm to suit, hesitated, and bashed its fists together
before its chest.
An intolerably bright beam of light lanced out from the
coppery helmet on the robot's head, slashing through the sky between
the Titanese forces and Earthforce. It plunged past the Earthforce
front line, narrowly missing the lead Destroid, a Crusader-class
heavy, and ripped into the armored flank of the dropship, which was
just starting to power up for takeoff.
The dropship exploded in a tremendous fireball, blackening
that end of the sky with smoke and silhouetting the Earthforce robots
against the white-orange light of the explosion.
Genreen gasped, then took a step forward and yelled up
indignantly, "Why the hell didn't you do that before they
disembarked?"
The giant robot turned and looked balefully down at Genreen
for a moment, the permanent scowl on its black-armored face seeming
just for him. After a moment, it spoke in the amplified voice of
Corwin Ravenhair:
"That's the difference between warfare and murder."
"Stupid kid," muttered Genreen as he went back to the battle
line and got ready to lead his tanks against Earthforce's.
Corwin heard him, but didn't stick around to have it out. He
had more important things to deal with - like the twelve Destroids who
would now be the -only- twelve Destroids Earthforce would be able to
send to Titan.
He applied his feet to the pedals, and Big O began to walk
forward. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until finally the
huge machine broke into an impossible-seeming run, torn sod and earth
flying in the wake of each enormous footstep. Behind him, the TDF/IPO
combined force raised their tanks, disembarked their infantry, and
surged into motion themselves.
/* Big Country "Driving to Damascus" _Driving to Damascus_ */
Captain John Sheridan really had to hand it to Captain Tenjou
and her crew. They might be a bunch of kids, but they were tough,
they were smart, and they had brass balls the size of cantaloupes,
especially their helmswoman. She was making that little ship do
things Sheridan's experienced spacer's eye was telling him were
impossible, and she was making them look -easy-. The Agamemnon's
gunners were having fits trying to keep up with her.
Ten minutes into the engagement, and already the Earthforce
contingent had hit stiffer resistance than they had expected. Not
only were their comm channels soaked with rock music (which Sheridan
secretly admitted he was rather enjoying), but the ground forces had
run into major trouble - some kind of assault-class Destroid, not on
any of the intel reports, had vaporized the 122nd Destroid Battalion's
only Destroid-rated dropship with only a single company, a third of
the battalion, landed. A dozen Destroids should still be able to
neutralize Titan's ground defenses - except for this mystery mecha,
which had torn into them in an all-out frontal assault and was in the
process of demolishing Company A's Fire Lance.
The space battle wasn't going much better. Valiant had
already done for two of the Agamemnon's escort destroyers and had her
sights set on a third, and the fleet's left flank was being harassed
by a Romulan-built destroyer that some who sighted her were reporting
carried Gamilon markings. That would be the Lorica, then, Princess
Amanda's ship. What an almighty mess -that- could turn into!
Sheridan still remembered the previous year, when the Psi Corps had
arrested Princess Dessler and her father, Gamilon Emperor Desslok, had
nearly bombarded the Earth back to the Stone Age.
General Parker was nearly beside himself, back at the planning
table coordinating the assault while he left the fleet actions
themselves to Sheridan. The only bright spots were in the numbers.
It might take the Earthforce group longer than they had initially
expected to overpower Titan's defenders, but overpower them they
would. The statistics were inescapable.
Only a matter of time.
The shuttle which landed on a side street two blocks from
Government Plaza had begun existence as a Rigel Yards Danube-class
runabout. Like the IPO's own Kennebec-class ships, this ship had been
heavily modified since leaving Rigel. Unlike the Kennebecs, though,
which had been modified for additional speed, durability and
firepower, this had been rebuilt for nothing but stealth, sacrificing
almost everything in the speed, durability and firepower departments
for that one overriding characteristic.
In that one area, it succeeded spectacularly - to the point
where, in broad daylight, in a city, two blocks from a building being
defended by two dozen armed and nervous individuals, no one noticed
it land. Similarly, no one noticed its crew of six black-clad men
disembark, slip across the street, and disappear down a manhole.
A moment later, five of them made their presence known in most
dramatic and unsubtle fashion as they burst from maintenance ducts
within Government Center and began assaulting the inner defenses
head-on. Reports of their attack spread through the Center's internal
tac net, amid considerable confusion at first, for no one quite knew
who or what they were. They weren't Earthforce troopers; the armor
they wore was all black, frightful and faceless, of a style none of
the defenders had ever seen before. Their armor appeared to be
powered, heavily shielded, and equipped with high-powered weaponry.
It was Imra Ardeen, commanding the defense force detachment
on Level 11, that made the most alarming discovery about them: they
appeared to be immune to telepathy.
As the reports from the internal defenders echoed over the tac
speakers along with the running commentary from the battle ahead and
the periodic updates from the battlefield to the south, Mia Ausa and
Anthy Tenjou looked uneasily at each other. They were in the Center's
lowest level, stationed outside the doors of Governor Miriam Ondeen's
emergency office. It had been decided that, with their powerful
skills at mystic shielding, Anthy and Mia would be the Governor's last
line of defense if Government Center were breached.
As the two sorceresses glanced at each other, Mia's eyes held
a question; Anthy nodded; and the two began to weave a warding around
the Governor's office door.
They had just finished it - a powerful working, one that
should keep even one of these armored marauders at bay - and were
settling back to rest a bit and recover their energies should more
active defense be needed when a black-clad form dropped down out of
the rafters. Anthy reacted first; she recoiled in surprise, then set
herself, raised her hands, and cried,
"Come to my hands: ROSENJAEGER!"
With a crack like thunder, a splinter of light crossed the
space in front of her, then resolved itself into a hexagonal staff of
beautiful red-brown wood, capped with gleaming gold and bearing the
runic inscription of a Valkyrie's weapon, also in gold. Anthy was
still a novice with the weapon, a Draconic warstaff like Corwin's own
trusty Stick, but she wielded it gamely all the same, presenting it in
a position of challenge and demanding to know the interloper's
business.
The figure, a man dressed in black, robed, cloaked, and hooded
unto anonymity, made a gesture with his right hand -
- and something invisible slammed Anthy back against the wall
next to the Governor's door like a blow from the fist of God, driving
the breath from her lungs. As the dark-skinned sorceress crumpled,
Mia made a noise of shock and dismay, turning to face the interloper.
Still weak from the warding, she nevertheless moved with speed and
grace as she drew and triggered her Minbari fighting staff and settled
into a ready stance.
The interloper chuckled softly, then reached up, took hold of
his overcloak, and threw it off. Mia gasped in astonishment, for she
recognized both the man and the clothing he wore underneath - and the
two images had never before come together in her mind.
The man was Roger Tremayne, the Psi Cop who had caused so much
trouble for the Institute Duelists' Society more than a year ago back
on Earth. She well remembered the interrogation, mildly voiced but
deadly serious, that she'd undergone at his hands in the early stages
of the Corps' crackdown at WPI. She'd used her sorcerous abilities to
mask the fact that she was mildly telepathic from him, knowing that in
doing so she would reveal that she had some strange power, but hoping
the man would be a blindly pragmatic modernist, like so many
present-day humans, and pass it off as his imagination.
Looking at him now, she realized that there was very little
chance of that, for Roger Tremayne stood before her dressed not in the
black of the Psi Corps, but the black of the Ancient and Obtenebrated
Order of the Sith. Mia had read of them and seen their pictures in
her ancient book about the Jedi Knights. The Sith were an evil
offshoot of the Jedi, power-hungry men who had sold their souls to the
Dark Side of the Force to gain that power. They wore black parodies
of Jedi robes and carried and fought with lightsabers, just as the
Jedi had done.
It was a Sith Lord who had all but wiped the Jedi Order out,
fighting for the last Santovasku Emperor, almost three millennia ago.
With Quevas XIII Santova's death and that of his Sith accomplice, the
dark order was supposed to be as dead as that of the Jedi... but here
was one now.
Roger smiled coldly. "You recognize me," he said. "Your
thoughts betray you. You recognize my face -and- my garments." He
took the silver cylinder of his lightsaber from his belt and thumbed a
control on it; a green-edged beam of white energy hissed from it and
hummed menacingly in the air, casting odd shadows on his angular face.
"That's very interesting," said Roger with faint, mocking
amusement. "I shall enjoy finding out how you knew of us."
Those blades were supposed to be able to cut through anything,
but the Anla'shok fighting staff was made of the finest materials
known to Minbari science - a science that had been in its relative
infancy when the Jedi and the Sith both fell into legend. Perhaps,
just perhaps, that would be enough. Mia let out her finest roar of
challenge and lunged -
- and staggered back a moment later holding two smoking pieces
of metal.
Well, she thought, I had to try. Discarding the ruined
weapon, she backed away, trying to gather her strength for a sorcerous
counterattack, casting quick glances at Anthy to see if her stunned
comrade was any nearer to recovery - and hoping against hope for help
to come.
Up on the balcony, Kaitlyn faltered slightly as she adjusted
her keyboards for the next number. Azalynn sidled nearer and
murmured, "What's the matter?"
"I d-don't know. Something... someth-thing's w-w-wrong.
B-besides the obv-v-vious."
"Should we stop?"
"N-not yet," Kate replied, shaking her head. "Let's d-do 'Red
B-Balloons' next... "
Corwin drove Big O to the left, pivoted on one massive foot,
and brought the machine's right knee up hard into the midsection of an
Earthforce Atlas-class assault Destroid. The Atlas crumpled, combat
gyros knocked askew, and before its pilot could recover, Corwin drove
Big O's left hand into the Destroid's chestplate, fingers digging into
the armor plating. The Atlas's pilot triggered his close-range
weapons, blanketing Big O in explosions, and the three remaining
pilots of operational Earthforce machines cheered. Surely even that
big black bastard couldn't stand up to a close-range missile spread and
a point-blank burst from the Atlas's mighty autocannon!
When the smoke cleared, though, Big O was still there -
battered, dented, smoking in a couple of places, but still very much
upright and not very impressed-looking. The silver piston in the Rune
God's left forearm rammed back, then forward, and the shockwave blew
the Atlas's reactor assembly clean out its back. The wrecked fusion
plant flew a dozen yards before exploding, washing both the ruined
Atlas and the victorious Big O in brilliant orange light.
The Rune God of Iron looked positively demonic in that light
as he contemptuously discarded the broken, now-partly-melted shell of
the Atlas and turned toward the three survivors, eyes glowing brightly
out of his hulking silhouette.
/* The Beatles "Revolution" _The White Album_ */
Wakaba Shinohara's back was to the wall, literally. The
black-armored marauder who had attacked her section - Area 12, Level
7 - had plowed through all the IPO blue-suiters she'd had with her,
and now it was just her and it... and she was out of ideas. All she
had was a katana, which she couldn't expect to do much against this
thing, and a blaster carbine, ditto.
This would be a good time for Clef's 'gift of magic' to
finally amount to something, she grumbled to herself as she jacked the
power dial on the blaster all the way past the top and got ready to do
what little she could to slow this bastard down.
She got off four shots on rapid fire before the marauder
reached her; two missed, owing to the E-11's legendary inaccuracy, and
the other two fizzled against his armor. Not quite knowing what else
to do, she ducked his first swing, drew her sword, and hoped that,
perhaps, her Duelist status would give her some special edge when
fighting with such a weapon.
The blade broke against the marauder's armor, and, with a
speed surprising for his armored bulk, he backhanded Wakaba,
catapulting her painfully across the hall and through the wall.
Broken wall panels tumbled down, burying the auburn-haired Duelist as
she crumpled to the corridor floor. Without further concern over her,
the marauder busied himself trying to open the elevator doors at the
end of the hall.
Occupied with this, he didn't notice the pile of rubble that
had buried Wakaba shift and settle.
He -did- notice when that pile exploded, sending fragments of
stone and wallcovering scattering in all directions and pinging a
particularly heavy chunk off his helmet. He turned, body language
radiating surprise, and saw his former quarry standing amid the
remains of the rubble that had pinned her. She was scuffed, bruised,
bleeding from a thin cut under one eye, and her clothes, jeans and a
bright green T-shirt, were ragged, but she was quite unbowed - and
surrounded by a coruscant green glow that seemed to be flowing from
the Lens clasped to her wrist.
"That. Hurt," she snarled.
The marauder didn't reply; he merely threw himself at her,
jets in his back coughing to give him a little extra impulse, and
flung forward a fist for a killing blow.
Wakaba's right hand snapped up and caught the punch, stopping
the marauder dead in his tracks. Grunting in surprise - the first
sound any of the defenders had heard one of them make - he strained
harder, to no avail. It almost felt like he was pushing against a
forcefield rather than a human hand. The harder he pushed, the
brighter the emerald light surrounding Wakaba got, especially at the
point of contact.
Then she raised her other arm, crossing her fist against her
chest like a Romulan salute, and in doing so presenting the face of
her Lens to her enemy. The energy lashed out from it, blowing him
clear down the hall.
The good news for the Marauder was that he now had access to
the elevator shaft, since Wakaba's blast had flung him clean through
the doors.
The bad news was that the impact had wrecked his back jets,
leaving him to plummet helplessly ten stories into the elevator
machinery area in the sub-subbasement, demolishing it completely on
impact.
Ten seconds later, the free elevator car plunged down after
him and landed on top of him.
Two seconds after that, its mangled wreckage was blown back up
by the explosion of his armor's fusion bottle, then crashed back down
amid the smoking, cooling debris.
Wakaba looked down at her now-lambently-glowing Lens, eyebrows
raised.
"Well!" she said.
Utena Tenjou gripped the arms of her captain's chair and
barked orders to her impromptu fleet of two, not stopping to marvel
that Amanda Dessler was taking orders from her without so much as a
by-your-leave. Valiant and Lorica were keeping the Earthforcer ships
busy, but it was a tightrope act all the way. The Titanese
Dragonflies, with Jung Freud helping them out in a borrowed, retired,
but still working Subpro Z-95 Headhunter, were still holding their
own, but the odds against them grew with every passing minute.
Without backup pretty soon, the situation was going to get sticky,
especially since Earthforce -did- have backup coming.
Added to all that was the fact that some part of Utena's mind
insisted on worrying about Anthy, down below, and wishing that the
former Rose Bride hadn't been so adamant about going down to pull her
weight in the planetary defense forces. She loved that new
assertiveness about Anthy, masked as it was by her usual quiet
demeanor - but it was damned inconvenient at times like this.
Not that, Utena mused to herself as Valiant shook with a
torpedo impact and one of the secondary consoles sparked a bit, I
could really claim she was safer here with me...
And there was Corwin, but of course he was with Big O, and
that was probably the safest place to be in this whole quadrant...
She shook her head, pushed it all out of her mind, and doubled
her efforts on the job at hand. She just had to hold them until more
IPO assets arrived, and hope that Earthforce's backup didn't get there
first.
Janice Barlow slammed another Photon cell into her Varista,
locked the weapon's breech, and opened up on the marauder who'd been
wrecking the lobby again. The bastard moved so fast, it was like
trying to tag a hydrophobic Bumblegrunt - she'd done a lot of damage
to the lobby herself, trying to take him down where the various
scattered IPO Tac types and Beltane cops had failed. The only ones
still on their feet in the lobby were herself and Neal Krummell, whose
VR-252 Gladiator Cyclone had definitely seen better days.
Still, the guy was brave, Janice had to give him that. His
suit was hopelessly outclassed by the gear the guy in black had for
these combat conditions, and still he hung in there. He'd taken a
couple of heavy body blows, and his frontal armor was cracked and
spiderwebbed - he had to be hurting in there - but his voice was as
strong as ever and his attitude was still upbeat as he called
encouragement to his Ragolian comrade and they tried to flank the
marauder.
"Listen, Red," he remarked over the short-range comm channel
that linked them, "I've got one plasma missile left. Why don't you
see if you can chase him into the corner and I'll let him have it?"
"Sounds decent to me," Janice replied, and began bracketing
the marauder again, trying to herd him. It worked, after a fashion,
but she had to be very careful, because his own weapons were no small
potatoes, and her Frame was only a light one. She wasn't sanguine
about testing her Hunter's Shield against his right arm's main plasma
battery, either.
At length she had him squared away, and Neal launched his
missile - but the marauder was too slippery. He actually seemed to
-dodge- the missile. He didn't clear it completely - it clipped his
right arm, blowing off the weapons array in a fiery explosion - but
the marauder was substantially unharmed as he hit the floor, gathered
himself, and then lunged straight toward Neal. Janice yelled a
warning, but the Tac Div agent was too slow in his damaged Cyclone.
The marauder hit him full-on with a nasty-sounding CRUNCH, flinging
him across the room to smash against the wall. He slid down,
unmoving, the facebowl of his CVR smashed.
Janice didn't waste time yelling his name or indulging in any
histrionics. She just set her teeth, changed out her Varista's
partly-spent Photon cell for her last fresh one, thumbed the weapon's
power dial to its very highest setting, and snarled,
"OK, boy. Come get -this-."
Then she stood up from behind her marble planter cover,
-daring- the marauder to come after her. He turned, sized her up for
a moment, then moved with that horrible gliding speed they had.
Hovering over Janice's shoulder, Mitra the Mag targeted the
seam dead-center on the marauder's chestplate and fed his targeting
fix to the Ragolian's cybereye. Time slowed down as her Frame's
systems kicked into high gear, also coordinated by Mitra's logic
center. Janice's arm snapped up, leveled, fired. The Varista raved
verdant destruction, vomiting the entire contents of its fully-charged
Photon cell against the marauder's stoutly built armor.
The marauder's arms, legs and head flew in five different
directions. Of his torso, simply nothing remained. Fifteen yards
behind the spot where he had been, a bit of stone crumbled and fell
from the top of the roughly circular hole burned in the far wall to
the bottom.
Janice Barlow jacked the Varista open and dumped the smoking,
totally exhausted Photon cell on the floor, where it melted a small
hole in the stone.
"Asshole," she muttered, plunking the partly-spent cell back
in and recharging the weapon. Then she holstered it and went to see
if Neal was alive.
/* Bad Religion "Hear It" _No Substance_ */
The IPO Tactical Division squad on Level 11 was getting wiped
out, and Imra Ardeen, as their de facto leader, knew it. Whatever
these things were, they were immune to telepathic attack, which meant
that for all her AEGIS qualifications, she was no more effective in
opposing this one than any other teenage girl with a blaster - which
is to say, not at all. She gave her squad orders to fall back,
covered their retreat, did everything right - but it would have taken
genius in small-unit tactics to beat this thing with what she had, and
though Imra Ardeen was many things, that she was not.
That left making sure as much information as possible got to
the other defenders, and as she backed toward the elevator bank and
kept up covering fire, she relayed over the tac net,
" - some kind of psionic barrier elements, possibly
cybernetic. It's hard to tell... it feels artificial, not like a
natural resistance. I don't think they're droids, but - "
She was interrupted by a burst from the marauder's weapons
array which slashed through the air above her. Only her AEGIS combat
training saved her, dropping her to the deck before the armored
attacker could track his weapons downward and tag her where she
stood. One of her men fell, his armor's chestplate smoking; the
others stepped up their counterattack, but they might as well have
been throwing rocks for all that their blasterfire affected the
marauder's armor.
The one functional elevator arrived on that floor just then,
stopping with a merry and completely incongruous "ding!" For a
moment, everyone, including the marauder, paused and looked at it in
puzzlement. Who the hell was riding an elevator into the middle of a
firefight?
The doors opened, and Imra's spirits spiked into a much higher
register. On the face of it, it didn't seem like she had much reason,
for what emerged from the elevator wasn't an antiarmor squad or a
crew-served heavy blaster or anything else that might have made an
impression on their seemingly-unstoppable foe. It was just one woman,
and a woman not armed with any ranged weapon, to boot.
But that one woman was Gudrun Truemace, so Imra's spirits rose
anyway.
Gudrun charged out of the elevator, a window-rattling bellow
of challenge trailing behind her with her long mahogany hair, her
spiked iron mace cocked low. The marauder took a half-step back,
raised his weapons array, and launched a plasma burst at her.
The Valkyrie -parried- it, a sweep of her mace sending the
green fire arching off in another direction to blow a hole in the
corridor wall, not slackening the pace of her charge a bit.
The marauder, his body language evincing shock, backpedaled
and opened fire at a more urgent rate, his expectations of a quick and
easy kill dashed. Gudrun kept coming, ignoring most of the
poorly-aimed volley fire, smacking the more accurate (or lucky) shots
away with quick, efficient flicks of her mace. In five seconds she'd
closed the gap between them, and the mace flashed around, far faster
than it looked like even a ruggedly-built woman like Gudrun should be
able to swing it.
What followed reminded Imra, acoustically, of a very hungry
man eating a lobster in an almighty hurry. When it was over, Gudrun
had a minor burn on one upper arm and a bit of a bruise at the corner
of her mouth, and the marauder looked like a motorcycle that had been
run over by a robotruck.
The gobsmacked Tac Div troopers stared for a few moments, then
sent up a mighty cheer.
The Valiant dodged a barrage of turbolaser fire from the
Agamemnon's forward batteries, returned the compliment with her
directional phasers, and vectored off in pursuit of one of the
Earthforce flagship's escorts. On the bridge, Utena kept one eye on
the shield status display and the other on the tactical plot, calling
coordinating instructions to Jethan and the fighters and occasionally
reminding Kozue of the bigger picture beyond the helmswoman's combat
tunnel vision.
Presently, one of the bridge's corridor doors whooshed open
and in padded Sergei, Kaitlyn's pet neotiger. Unconcerned by the
noise, the flashy spectacle on the main viewer, or the occasional jump
of the deck beneath his feet, he padded across the bridge, seated
himself nonchalantly next to the conn, and then released a mighty
yawn, stretching his fanged jaws wide.
Utena chuckled. "Nice of you to join us," she remarked,
reaching to give the tiger a quick pat on the head.
"Grmf," Serge replied, licking his chops. Translation: When's
dinner?
On Level 3 of Government Center, Juri Arisugawa was starting,
just faintly, to wonder what she'd thought she was doing, volunteering
to help with the defense of this place. Juri didn't suffer from a
lack of confidence. She knew she had many fine qualities, among them
her natural athleticism, her good looks, her keen intellect, her
exceptional fencing skill, and her administrative prowess.
None of those were much good against a locomotive, though,
and that was pretty much what she, the four Romulans Amanda had
dispatched to help with the defense, and Guy Morgan were up against
here. They were in exactly the same situation as Imra and her TD
team, except that four of them were armed with Romulan disruptor
carbines instead of BlasTech E-11s.
"This is hopeless," Sub-Centurion Voltetius snarled, voicing
the very thought that had just crossed Juri's mind. It would take a
miracle for the six of them to defeat this monster with the weapons
they had available... and Juri Arisugawa, as all her friends had been
repeatedly informed, did not believe in miracles.
Kaitlyn's brother Guy, however, did. It was one of the
defining features of her family that they -all- did. Every member of
the extended Hutchins-Morgan-Ravenhair clan seemed to believe that,
with a strong enough heart and deep enough convictions, one could
overcome any adversity and emerge better for it. It was a conviction
they shared with Utena Tenjou, and when she wasn't finding it
irritatingly naive, Juri had to admit that it endeared all of them to
her, Utena included.
Now Guy, barely thirteen years old - Tenjou's age, though Juri
could hardly believe it as she thought back on it, during the Grand
Tournament - gripped his E-11 more tightly, set his jaw in that
charmingly adamant way that all his family had, raised himself
slightly from cover, volleyed autofire at the marauder to no apparent
effect, and declared flatly,
"There -has- to be a way to stop this thing."
"I'm open to suggestions, kid," Voltetius replied wryly.
"Fall back to the elevator core," Juri told Voltetius and the
others. "Maybe we can - "
The marauder kept her from finishing her plan, whatever it
was; spying a weakness in the ceiling above, it unleashed its weapons
array upward, and with a crash, paneling, broken structural members,
and a lot of dust fell down on the defenders of Level 3. The Romulans
took the brunt of it, knocked down and unconscious with a few bones
broken. Juri, in the fore of the group, caught the edge; she was
knocked off her feet and stunned by a beam, but not pinned. Guy was
missed entirely.
Coughing through the dust, he called for the others, asking if
they were all right, and got no responses. He found Juri, saw that
she was semiconscious but all right, and went to check on the
Romulans. Of the four, he could only see Voltetius, who lay prone,
head, shoulders and one arm extending from under the rubble heap, a
trickle of green coming from the corner of his mouth.
They're all down, Guy thought to himself, then turned to face
down the hallway. If he's not stopped, he'll come down here and
finish them off. If I don't do something, Voltetius, Miss Juri and
the others will die.
His blue eyes narrowed.
Not going to happen.
The marauder stalked out of the dust cloud, his right optic
port glowing as he locked his targeting system on the one opponent
still on his feet.
Guy Morgan faced an opponent twice his size and with ten times
his firepower, and he didn't blink. Instead, in a moment of utter
clarity, he knew exactly what he had to do. It was like a game he'd
played with his twin sister Priss and her best friend Sylvie a
thousand thousand times - Showdown.
The marauder fired, but Guy wasn't where he had been. With
all his strength and speed, he threw himself sideways, dropping his
E-11 and scooping up the disruptor carbine that had fallen from
Voltetius's outstretched hand when the sub-centurion was borne down by
the collapsing ceiling. When he came up, though, he didn't fire it;
that would have been pointless, he'd seen that well enough when the
weapon was in Voltetius's hands.
Instead, he yanked off the sideplate, blessing his
ever-exasperating twin for her all-consuming obsession with firearms,
ripped out the safety circuit, and rammed the power dial all the way
to the top. The disruptor sparked, fizzled, and started to overload.
With a defiant yell, Guy launched himself at the marauder,
jamming the muzzle of the disruptor squarely into the notch in the
man's black armor where his helmet's neck shroud joined his plastron,
and fired.
There was a tremendous flash of green-white light, bright
enough to blind Juri Arisugawa for almost twenty seconds. She pulled
herself out of the wreckage, bright spots dancing in front of her
eyes, and shook her head, calling, "Guy? GUY!"
When her vision cleared, what she saw filled her heart with
ice. The marauder lay at the far end of the corridor, smoke curling
gently up from the place where his head had been... and Guy lay
sprawled at Juri's feet, smoke curling gently up from... well, most of
him. His face, somehow, was unharmed, but the rest of him was a
burned, smashed ruin.
Juri dropped to her knees, put a fingertip to the side of his
throat, and then gasped in surprise.
"Still alive," she whispered, incredulous. Then she tabbed
the IPO commbadge that had been loaned to her and said in her hardest,
most businesslike voice, "Arisugawa to Central. I need a medical team
on Level 3 NOW!"
Juri didn't believe in miracles. She did believe, however,
that the world had a perverse sense of humor and liked to rub her nose
in it, for, as it so often did, it had gone ahead and provided one -
of a sort.
The Art of Noise were just getting to the good part of "I Think
I Like It" when the door to the stairway smashed open and the last
marauder charged in. This interruption stopped even them, as Liza
scrambled up from her engineer's position with weapons in hand.
Edward and Ein emerged from under the table; Edward held a hand weapon
of bizarre design, while a peculiar thing that looked like a turret
unfolded from the back of Ein's equipment harness. The band stopped
playing and turned.
R. Dorothy Wayneright moved before any of the others could
further react.
A moment later, one of the policemen out on the plaza,
standing by his cruiser listening with consternation to the chaos that
had erupted on the tac band from inside Government Center, was
startled to see a black-armored humanoid form come hurtling through one
of the Council Chamber's windows, plummet down in a neat parabolic arc
across half the plaza, and smash with a tremendous splash and crunch
into the decorative-plinthed plaza fountain. A few of the cops moved
over toward the fountain and prodded at the inert form gingerly, but
it didn't move - would never move again.
Officer Barnes looked up at the window the thing had come
from, then raised his electrobinoculars for a better look. Framed in
the jagged remains of the window, R. Dorothy looked balefully down at
her fallen opponent, then turned away.
She -hated- being interrupted in the middle of "I Think I Like
It".
In the basement, Roger Tremayne turned away from the
unconscious form of Mia Ausa and faced off against Anthy again, the
cold smile on his face unchanged.
"You're quite a puzzle, my dear," he said. "This one is
obviously a student of the old ways, but you... you're something else.
Something intriguing." His smile widened a little, becoming
absolutely no warmer. "Something I look forward to studying in much
greater detail."
Anthy narrowed her eyes and raised Rosenjaeger to the ready.
"You won't find me so easy to take," she told him.
"We'll see," he said - and then tore her staff from her hands
with a negligent gesture and sent it clattering off down the corridor.
"It would be a shame to destroy such a lovely weapon," he told her
conversationally. "Now. Come quietly, my dear. Who knows? You
might come to enjoy life with us. A woman with your powers could make
quite a place for herself in the new world order."
His suggestion carried added weight both from the Force and
his telepathic powers, but Anthy only laughed mirthlessly. "You have
no idea," she told him, "how tired I am of hearing words like those
from men like you."
Roger shook his head. "You're stronger than you look," he
conceded. "I suppose it'll have to be by force, then."
He advanced, and Anthy's thorny vines whipped out from the
walls on either side to engulf him in their tearing embrace. He
snarled, slashing through them with his lightsaber, flinging them back
and withering them with the power of the Dark Side. She stepped back,
stepped again, felt the wall behind her, and gathered all her strength
for a last, desperate push:
>Elemental fury,
slashing light that tears the sky,
Hear the voice of She Who Calls
and smite my enemy with your timeless wrath:
LIGHTNING LANCE!<
Yellow-white energy flung itself from Anthy's out-turned
palms, crackling across the space between them to enshroud the
black-clad man in sizzling currents of power. He bellowed in pain,
stumbling back, and then seemed to gather himself. That cold dark
power lashed out from him again, pushing the energy back, and Anthy's
last attack fizzled.
"Is that the best you can do, my dear?" asked Roger
mockingly. "Perhaps I'll have to revise my opinion of you. Here -
try -my- version."
Blue energy crackled from his free hand, and Anthy felt
herself flung back, muscles knotting in agonizing convulsion. The
wall struck her, and then she fell into mercifully cool blackness.
On the top floor, Kaitlyn gasped, then dashed for the stairway
door. Her bandmates and Liza didn't ask any questions - they just
followed hard on her heels, readying such weapons as they had.
In outer space, Utena jumped in her seat, letting out a yelp
of pain, then looked around in puzzlement. She wasn't -in- pain - so
where had that sudden, terrible -impression- of pain come from?
"Anthy," she whispered as a dread, cold certainty touched her
heart. "Something's happened. Kozue, disengage! Get us down to
Beltane - the bastards are trying a backdoor play!"
"What?! I CAN'T disengage!" Kozue replied, sounding a bit
harried. "I dunno if you've noticed, but I'm in a running phaser duel
with a CRUISER here!"
"Dammit!" Utena snarled, slamming a fist down on her chair
arm. "Fast as you can - finish them and let's get out of here!
Lorica, you'll have to hold them - something's going on at Government
Center... "
"-Hold- them?!" Jethan's voice replied incredulously. "Have
you lost your -mind-?"
Utena gritted her teeth until she was afraid they would crack,
then let out her breath. He was right. They were both right. She
couldn't abandon this fight; if she did, they would -all- lose.
"Belay," said Utena. "Come to one-one-five mark seventeen and
engage that Hyperion before she can flank Lorica."
"Aye aye, Captain," replied Kozue, turning word to deed.
Dammit, Anthy, thought Utena to herself, forcefully
restraining herself from chewing on her thumbnail. You'd fucking well
better be all right.
In the cockpit of Big O, Corwin Ravenhair recoiled with a
scream as all his muscles bunched and released. Dizzied by the sudden
spasm of pain, he lost control of the Rune God. Big O staggered, fell
to one knee. The two remaining Earthforce Destroids, an Awesome-class
assault unit and the company commander's Crusader, sensed weakness and
moved in for the kill.
In the next moment, Big O had straightened, his eyes blazing,
as Corwin seized the controls, teeth gritted.
"Anthy!" he cried, wrenching at the handgrips, and Big O
whirled, one enormous spiked fist smashing backhand into the Awesome's
forward armor. Cockpit window smashed, pilot stunned by the
shockwave, the assault Destroid reeled. Big O turned, missile racks
opening, and rained explosives on the Crusader until it fell. By
then, the Awesome had recovered. Particle cannon fire lashed Big O,
carving a bright, shiny furrow in the armor over his left shoulder.
Snarling, Corwin whirled the Rune God of Iron and triggered
his eyebeams, carving the Awesome's gun arm off at the shoulder.
Burnout creepage flashed back along the powersystems and shut down
the Destroid's reactor. Not satisfied with merely disabling his
enemy, Corwin drove Big O forward, pounding the machine down flat on
its back, then plunged the Rune God's hands into the Awesome's chest,
tore out its power core, and brandished it like a trophy before
throwing it aside.
Alone and victorious, Big O retired from the battlefield,
charging toward Beltane at top speed.
Roger Tremayne stood triumphant, his mission complete. Not
one but -two- anomalous espers collected, one of them a suspected
extradimensional. Not a bad day's work; his master was sure to be
pleased. He saw from a glance at the status display on his wrist that
all five of his servants had been destroyed, but that had been
expected, and they had served their purpose. The two women were in
Roger's hands, and their capture would bring at least one more running
straight into Lord Sidious's web.
Roger especially looked forward to the look on Utena Tenjou's
face when she realized there was no escape for her. Wiping the
arrogance from that girl-child's pretty face would be worth all the
pain of the wounds he'd suffered at the hands of that Gamilon
harridan, and the humiliation of his official disgrace in the Psi
Corps. Of course, the Corps was largely irrelevant, but the
appearances had to be preserved, and the demotion really -had- stung
some part of Roger.
Yes... it would be good to get even for all of that.
He knelt down next to Anthy, hanging his deactivated
lightsaber on his belt, and touched the side of her unconscious face
with the fingertips of his right hand. A pretty one, this, and
unusual - he'd never seen a black girl with violet hair or green eyes
before. Then again, he supposed she wasn't really human, which might
account for -
"DON'T - YOU - TOUCH - HER!" a voice screamed, and suddenly
cold steel was biting into Roger's shoulder, not far from where the
Gamilon's k'tayyl had carved him a year before. Bellowing in surprise
and pain, the telepath recoiled, twisting away from the blade before
it could bite deeper, then thrust out his hand and flung his assailant
away with the power of the Dark Side.
Recovering himself as best he could, Roger recentered himself,
pushed down the pain, then drew and ignited his lightsaber again.
Inwardly, he was astonished. He'd never even felt his attacker
coming! He reached out with his mind as his eyes sized up the
opponent. It was another one of those Duelists, the tall, slim but
broad-shouldered young man with the long, wavy green hair. Saionji,
his name was, Roger forgot his first name offhand.
He was too busy reacting to think about it too hard anyway,
since, to his utter shock, his attacker's mind resisted his telepathic
assault. Well, no - not resisted. -Avoided-. It flowed before his
attack like water, or mercury. The man's mind was nearly blank. All
that existed in it were a few simple, overpowering imperatives.
Foremost among them being "Kill the person who hurt Anthy."
With a roar of rage that rattled the basement's structural
beams, his pupils the size of purely theoretical particles, Kyouichi
Saionji flung himself at Roger Tremayne.
/* Ministry "Just One Fix" _Psalm 69_ */
In all his years, Roger had never faced an enemy like this
before. As a telepath trained in combat, he was accustomed to relying
on his psionic powers to incapacitate any enemy who tried him. As a
Sith Adept trained in the Dark Side of the Force, he was accustomed to
paralyzing his opponents with fear and overwhelming them with his
rage.
This man could teach him a thing or two about rage, he had
absolutely no fear, and his mind was a thing alien to Roger's
experience. The Psi Cop might as well have been trying to intimidate
or psi-shock an oncoming avalanche. The only advantages Roger had
were in his greater experience with a blade and the fact that, if
Saionji tried to parry his lightsaber with the mere steel blade the
Duelist held, he would not only fail, but lose his weapon.
But, as he backed Roger all around the broad subbasement
corridor, severing utility pipes and electrical cables and carving
furrows in the concrete walls of the said corridor with his attacks,
Saionji didn't seem to be worrying much about that.
Kaitlyn and the others following her piled out of the stairway
at the end of the corridor to see this battle raging at the other
end. Roger's green lightsaber flashed and flickered, missing Saionji
by inches, by millimeters, as the enraged Duelist ducked, dodged, and
weaved, always pressing his own attack. Roger was bloodied, his Sith
robes slashed in several places, and Saionji's blade seemed almost to
cut the air with the same sinister hum as the Psi Cop's saber as it
sought its master's enemy's blood. The curious no-touch duel raged
for almost ten minutes before one of them struck a truly telling blow.
And the one who did it was Kyouichi Saionji.
Roger Tremayne screamed, a high, agonized scream, as his right
arm parted midway between shoulder and elbow in a brilliant spray of
blood. He staggered back, clutching at the wound, and Saionji
advanced, a look of feral triumph crossing his lean, hard face.
Tremayne fell back against the wall, thrust his bloodied left
hand forward, and lashed Saionji with the same Dark Side lightning
he'd used to fell Anthy. The Duelist faltered, howling in pain, then
gathered himself up and started advancing again - THROUGH the storm of
blue-white fire.
Roger's eyes widened in something like panic as he heard the
chorus of the Dark Side shift to favor the Duelist. His lightning
sputtered, died away, as Saionji unknowingly drew strength from it.
He shrank back, then threw himself aside as Saionji's blade whipped
through the space where his head had just been. He thrust out his
remaining hand again, but not to attack this time. Bending the Force
to his will, he called his lightsaber to his off hand, lit it up, and
threw himself into one last desperate attack.
Saionji turned, saw the strike coming, and instinctively
parried it. The lightsaber's blade sliced through his sword, severing
most of the blade, and then burned through his shirt and bit deep into
his right side before the stub of the tachi's blade caught against the
projector tip of the lightsaber. Snarling in agonized defiance,
Saionji thrust the blade aside so hard that he broke Roger's grip.
The lightsaber, blade automatically withdrawing, clattered away down
the corridor again.
Kyouichi Saionji, gravely wounded, fell against Roger's chest,
the strength escaping from his legs. Roger smiled, raised his one
remaining hand, and closed it around the Duelist's throat. Robbed of
his weapon for the second time, he decided he no longer needed one.
The madman was on his way out anyway; why not help him along?
Grinning cruelly, he tightened his grip, looking intently into
Saionji's pinprick violet eyes, watching to see the light go out of
them.
Instead they expanded to a more normal size, looking back at
Roger with sudden, total lucidity, and this time the Psi Cop -did-
feel his opponent's intentions - too late to do anything about them.
With a sudden, superhuman burst of strength, Saionji rammed
the jagged, still-red-hot, ten-inch stub of his tachi's blade into
Roger's gut, twisted it, wrenched it sideways, and tore it out again,
releasing a gush of blood onto the concrete floor. Then he rose up to
his full height, broke Roger's grip, raised the ruined blade above his
head with both hands, and drove it down into the Psi Cop's upper
chest.
Roger Tremayne gasped, gagged, and stumbled backward, not sure
whether to clutch at his belly or his throat. Finally he settled on
grabbing at the sword. It came away as the strength left Saionji's
hands; Roger seized it with his one hand and tried to pull it free,
but it had bitten into his breastbone and lodged there.
He raised his astonished eyes to Saionji's, saw a weary
smile come onto the Duelist's face -
- and then a transporter beam swept him up and he knew no
more.
Saionji looked past the spot where his opponent had been, past
the pool of blood left behind by Tremayne's partial disembowelment,
and saw Anthy sitting up in seiza, her eyes wide with astonishment and
concern. Warmth flooded him at the sight of that look in her eyes for
him. He gave her a jaunty grin,
and then passed out.
"We've got trouble, joH'wI'," Klaang observed from his sensor
console. "Earthforce reinforcements entering combat sensor range at
flank speed, ETA 5 minutes. Looks like another Nova-class and her
battlegroup."
"Wonderful," Utena replied.
"And that," Kozue added as one of the Earthforce destroyers
fell aside, windows and drives darkening as her reactor died, "was the
last of the photon torpedoes."
"Even better," replied Utena sardonically. "Shut down the
launchers and targeting systems and redirect whatever power that frees
up to the shields."
"Already done, but it only netted us 5%. Those things don't
use much power nowadays." Valiant bucked as the Agamemnon's forward
gunners scored. "And there goes that five percent." The helmswoman
took a moment to glance over her shoulder and observe, "We're gonna
get clobbered when that second fleet gets here."
"I know," Utena replied, "but what else can we do? I'm not
running out on Titan. Where the hell are -our- reinforcements?"
Klaang surprised her by answering that purely rhetorical
question with a bellow of triumph.
"Ask, my Captain, and ye shall receive! Challenger and
support vessels inbound at high warp!"
"ETA?" Utena asked instantly.
"Would now do?" Klaang replied.
IPS Challenger dropped from warp at the head of a small fleet.
Only two of the other ships in that fleet belonged to the
International Police Space Force: IPS Pennsylvania, the Iowa-class
battleship acquired from the WDF at Babylon 6's change of command, and
Valiant's class ship, IPS Defiant. The rest, ten strong, were mostly
Centauri-sector patrol forces borrowed from the Wedge Defense Force's
Strategic Fleet under the command of WDF Admiral James T. Kirk.
Kirk's Enterprise wasn't here, but three of the ships he had
sent to answer his old friend Gryphon's cry for help were of the same
class; the rest were Iowas and Excelsiors. The two ships which weren't
WDF were a lone GENOM-built Ikazuchi-class spacecraft carrier, which
was even now disgorging its wings of Legios and TIE Avenger fighters,
and a Gamilon K'tayyl-class destroyer, weapons visibly charged for
war.
On the battle-red bridge of the Challenger, Gryphon sat up in
his command chair and snapped, "Get me the Earthforce flagship."
Lieutenant Hoshi Sato nodded and worked her controls; a moment
later, John Sheridan's bridge appeared on the main viewer.
"Captain Sheridan," said Gryphon in a voice tight with anger.
"I think you know why we're here."
"To declare war on the Earth Alliance?" Sheridan replied,
raising an eyebrow.
Gryphon snorted. "You're smarter than that, Sheridan," he
said. "You declared the war when you attacked Zeta Cygnan territory."
"General Alvin Parker, Earthforce," cut in the broadly-built,
grizzled flag officer standing to Sheridan's right. "I'm in command
of the forces tasked with liberating Titan Colony from Zeta Cygni's
illegal occupation, and - "
Gryphon didn't bother restraining his laugh, and it was all he
needed to utter to stop Parker cold.
"Turn your ships around and head back to Earth, -now-, Captain
Sheridan, and we can still keep this from turning into a full-blown
war," said Gryphon to the man he regarded as his real opposite number,
ignoring the general entirely. "Your troops on the ground will be
interned and repatriated, assuming none of them are convicted of war
crimes. That's the best I can offer you. Press this further and I
won't be responsible for the consequences - President Clark will."
Sheridan nodded, accepting the statement implicit in Gryphon's
naming of the Earth Alliance's chief executive.
"I'm glad you realize that I'm only a soldier following
orders," he replied. "I'm sorry, Captain, I really am, but my orders
are to take and hold Titan, and that's what I have to do."
Gryphon sighed. "I'm sorry too," he said. "Here's hoping we
both survive. Challenger to Task Force Titan - "
He was interrupted by a bleat from the sensor panel. Hanson
Davion, acting as his interim science officer while Klaang was on
assignment with Valiant, peered at the display, then said mildly,
"-This- will be interesting."
Before Gryphon could ask what would be interesting, another
fleet dashed into the conflict zone at warp speed, stopping just off
the battle line drawn between Earthforce and the IPO-led relief
force. This one was strong but had an unfinished look to it, as if,
like Gryphon's fleet, it had been knocked together hastily out of
available assets. The ships matched, though. Some were the same
classes as those in the International Police fleet's WDF contingent;
others were the newer Starfleet-only designs, most of which Gryphon
found very ugly, like the Nebula-class cruisers and the massive vessel
in the lead.
A moment later, a transmission interrupted the conversation
between Sheridan and Gryphon, dividing both commanders' viewers into a
split screen to accommodate the image of a bald, patrician, and
utterly no-nonsense face both of them recognized instantly.
"This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship
Enterprise," the new force's commander declared in his rich, resonant,
commanding voice. "By authority of Starfleet Commander, Admiral James
Morrow, I hereby recognize that an armed conflict exists between two
Federation members, namely the Earth Alliance and the Republic of Zeta
Cygni. I am invoking Federation martial law for the Solar system.
All armed forces are to stand down and return to their home bases as
of 1200 hours Federation Standard Time. Any force which violates this
cease-fire will be met by the full weight of Starfleet."
On the part of Gryphon's screen which still showed the bridge
of the Agamemnon, General Parker scowled. "Captain Picard, this is
General Alvin E. Parker, Earth Alliance Titan Liberation Forces. We
have a lawful - "
"The Federation High Council has been apprised of your claim,"
Picard cut him off sharply. "They will render a decision in due
time. In the meantime, you will withdraw your forces and await their
decision, as required by Federation law."
Parker set his teeth and, determined to take away -something-
from this nightmare assignment, persevered, "Captain, the
International Police ship Valiant has as crew and passengers several
individuals wanted by the Earth Alliance for crimes committed during
the emergency. We demand you turn over Valiant and her crew to Earth
Alliance custody at once."
Now Picard was starting to look a little annoyed. "General,
what part of 'return to home base' do you not understand?" he inquired
with cordial hostility. "This is now a Federation matter. The
Federation High Council will decide the validity of -all- your
government's claims. If you attempt to seize the Valiant by force,
you will be committing an act of war against the United Federation of
Planets... and that, I assure you, will be the last mistake you -ever-
make."
Parker glowered at the Starfleet captain for a moment, then
slumped slightly as he recognized the validity of Picard's orders.
"Very well, Captain," he replied. "We're leaving - under
protest. May we have time to disengage and recover our ground
forces?"
"You may not," Picard replied flatly. "They will be taken
into Starfleet custody and repatriated once a Federation investigation
has determined their war-crimes status."
Parker grunted. "Better than having them locked up by the
Zetans, I suppose. Very well, Captain," he repeated. "Agamemnon
out."
Gryphon could have sworn he saw a little smile on John
Sheridan's face, a twinkle in his eye, as the transmission from the
Earthforce ship cut off.
"Captain Picard," he said. "I'll dismiss my ships back to
their bases, but I request permission for Challenger to remain here
for the time being. Titan is, after all, still Zeta Cygnan territory
until and unless the Federation High Council decides otherwise."
Picard considered this request, still totally businesslike,
then nodded once. "Very well. I've been instructed to meet with
Governor Ondeen as soon as possible, in an attempt to determine the
wishes of the people of Titan themselves. You're welcome to attend
that meeting as well, Captain Hutchins, if you wish."
"I do wish," Gryphon replied. "I'll see you down there as
soon as I've finished squaring away my people."
"Understood. Picard out."
Gryphon sat back in his seat, watching the Earthforce fleet
disengage and depart, and listened with one ear to the reports of the
surrender of their ground forces. Then he sighed deeply, letting out
all the tension of the impending battle, and said, "Challenger to Task
Force Titan. You all heard my conversation with Captain Picard.
Thanks for your help, everybody, but I hope you'll forgive me when I
say I'm glad it wasn't needed. All ships, return to base. Challenger
out." He paused, scratching the head of his ship's mascot Wolfgang,
then said, "Hoshi, would you get me Valiant, please?"
"Captain Tenjou's holding on line 2," replied Hoshi with a
smile, and Utena's bridge appeared on Gryphon's viewer.
"You know how to make an entrance, Dad, I'll give you that,"
she said with a grin.
"Lots of practice," Gryphon replied, matching it. "Everything
OK there?"
"Yeah, we're fine. Out of ammo and a bit beat up - you came
along at just the right time - but no casualties." She paused,
looking off to the side at a tactical plot, then continued, "The TDF
lost five fighters, two pilots dead. They're still picking up the
pieces in the ground battle... but overall, it looks like we might
have gotten away with this in better shape than we expected."
Suddenly Klaang made a noise of surprise and discontent. He
entered the frame at Gryphon's right, his big, ugly face looking
troubled, and said, "Maybe not quite, joH'wI'. I think you had both
better get down to Beltane immediately. Unknown forces attacked
Government Center during the battle. There have been casualties."
Utena went pale. "Not - " she said, but Klaang shook his
head.
"The emtai-Tenjou is fine," he said. "But several of the
others have been injured, two gravely." He turned to face Gryphon and
added, "One is your son, Captain."
Gryphon came half out of his chair; beside Klaang, so did
Utena, and both of them had almost identical expressions. It would,
Ruri Hoshino mused, have been funny if it hadn't been so desperate.
"Corwin?" asked Gryphon.
"No, not Corwin," replied Klaang. "Guy."
Utena let herself fall into her seat, hating herself for the
rush of knee-weakening relief she felt mingled with the sustained
concern and horror. Gryphon, on the other hand, got the rest of the
way up.
"I'm on my way. Lore, you have the bridge."
Nightfall in Beltane, and all was pervaded with an air of
tense, nervous expectation. The Federation Council was still
deliberating over the fate of Earth's sovereign nations and Titan. In
a suite of diplomatic quarters at Government Center, Gryphon sat in an
armchair, trying not to fret. There were three other chairs in the
suite's sitting room; one held Utena Tenjou, another Jean-Luc Picard,
and the third Corwin Ravenhair. Everyone there had offered to go
fetch another chair for Anthy, but she was just as pleased to sit on
the floor next to Utena's chair, her hand covering the Grand Duelist's
on the chair arm.
Up above, in Challenger's sick bay, Doctors Selar and Phlox
labored to save the lives of Guy Morgan, grievously wounded by a
disruptor explosion, and Kyouichi Saionji, nearly cut in half by a
lightsaber. Neither young man's fate had yet been determined - more
things to add to the tension and the waiting. Wakaba Shinohara
refused to leave Saionji's side, and in light of the green glow that
surrounded her whenever she became agitated, neither Selar nor Phlox
had thought it necessary to insist. Kaitlyn and Juri, slightly more
circumspect, kept their vigil in the forward lounge. The others were
scattered here and there, mostly asleep after their exhausting day.
Utena wasn't even sure what the hell time it was relative to
when she'd gotten up and prepared for the trip to Toronto. It seemed
like about a hundred years ago... but she couldn't sleep, not until
the rest of this mess was decided.
Captain Picard, seeing the distress in her face, tried to
reassure her, saying in a quiet, diplomatic tone of voice, "I
shouldn't worry, Captain Tenjou. The Earth Alliance has acted well
outside its authority in this matter. I'm quite certain that the
Federation High Council will clear all of this up in due time."
"I hope you're right," she replied, "but I'll believe it when
I see it."
"Well, however it comes out," said Gryphon, "I want you to
know that you did well today, Utena, you and all your crew. If not
for you guys coordinating the defenses, Titan would have fallen within
an hour. You held out for nearly five, long enough for us and
Jean-Luc's forces to arrive and put an end to the fighting." He
cracked a wry grin. "If we had room in the fleet for another flag
officer I'd promote you."
Utena chuckled. "I'll settle for a raise," she joked.
"Thanks, anyway... but I'm not sure it'll mean much to me if Guy and
Saionji don't pull through." She chuckled again, more darkly this
time. "Who would ever have thought there'd come a day when I was
worried that -Saionji- might die... "
Anthy squeezed her hand gently and said nothing.
There was a beep at the door. Out of sheer habit, Picard
barked, "Come!" at the same time as Gryphon's more easygoing, "C'mon
in," then turned and met the IPO captain's grin with a faintly
sheepish little smile. The door hissed open and Luornu Durgo entered,
looking faintly rattled.
"Fleet Captain, the Federation Council has just announced its
decisions."
"And?"
Instead of replying directly, Luornu crossed the room and
handed him a datapad. He read it, the scowl on his face deepening by
the second; then he flung it across the room, snarling under his
breath, "Spast!"
"What?" asked Utena, leaning forward in concern. "What's the
matter?"
Gryphon got up, retrieved the pad, sat back down again, and
said, "-This- is the matter." He cleared his throat and read, "'The
Federation High Council has voted to absolve the Earth Alliance of
any accusations of wrongdoing in the wake of the coup attempt by the
Argentine Empire. There will be no sanctions taken or permitted
against Earth.'"
Utena leaned forward still more, outrage plastered all over
her face. "-What-?!"
"'Furthermore,'" Gryphon went on, his tone of voice becoming
more and more venomous as he read, "'the High Council decided that
since the nation-states of Earth are subordinate to the Earth
Alliance, the dissolution of those states is a matter purely internal
to Earth. The Federation will not interfere in Earth's unification
efforts, although the High Council does exempt the colony at Titan,
the moon of Saturn (Sol VI), as the said colony, being a lawful part
of the Republic of Zeta Cygni, falls outside Earth Alliance
jurisdiction.'" He stopped, snorted, discarded the pad again, and
added sourly, "Well, -that's- mighty white of them."
Picard sat in his chair, his usual composure almost
completely destroyed. The man looked utterly dumbfounded. Finally,
after a moment of fumbling, he said,
"Captain Hutchins, Captain Tenjou... I... I don't know what to
say. This decision comes as a complete and total shock to me. I
cannot imagine what the Federation Council can be thinking."
"We can see that," Gryphon replied, his voice surprisingly
gentle given how angry he obviously was. "It's all right, Jean-Luc.
It's not your fault. We don't blame you." He chuckled, a little
bitterly. "After all, even with all this, you -did- save Titan. If
they'd managed to take it, well... possession is nine-tenths of the
law, as they say."
"I... " Picard got to his feet, tugged down his uniform
tunic, and tried again. "I must return to Enterprise," he said.
"There may - "
As if triggered by the statement, his commbadge beeped and
said in Will Riker's voice, "Enterprise to Picard."
Picard tapped the badge. "Picard."
"New orders from Starfleet Command, sir. You'd better come
back up."
"I was just on my way, Number One," Picard replied, his
businesslike veneer back in place. He turned to Gryphon and said,
"I'll speak with you again before either of us leaves the system."
Gryphon nodded. "I'll be here for the foreseeable."
Picard nodded in return, then tabbed his commbadge again.
"Picard to Enterprise. One to beam up."
A moment later he was gone, and there was an awkward silence.
"Well," said Utena after a moment. She stood up, dusted off
her hands, and went on, "I think I've had about all the horseshit I
can swallow for one day. I'm going to bed. Good night, everybody."
Anthy went with her; after a moment, heaving a massive sigh,
Corwin got up, bade his father good night, and left the room as well.
Several minutes went by as Gryphon sat in silence, glaring balefully
out at the starry night.
"Er... " said Luornu Durgo diffidently. "Did you... need me
for anything more, sir?"
Gryphon started faintly, jolted out of his reverie, then
turned a gentle look to his new yeoman.
"No, Lieutenant, I'm sorry. I should have dismissed you after
I got done swearing," he added with a wry smile. "Hell of a first
day, huh?"
Luornu smiled slightly. "I don't think I'll die of boredom in
this job, that's for sure. Oh - and if we're really going to be
informal in the Space Force? You can call me Lu if you want."
Gryphon grinned. "OK, I will. Good night, Lu."
"Good night, sir."
She left him then, and he sat looking out the window for
hours, his mind tumbling over and over.
Then he reached to the table beside him, picked up the
telephone, dialed a long number, and waited through three rings.
"You were right," he said to the man who answered. "It's
starting."
/* The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again" _Who's Next_ */
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited We'll be fighting in the streets
presented With our children at our feet
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES And the morals that they worship
FUTURE IMPERFECT will be gone
- Symphony of the Sword No. 3 - And the men who spurred us on
Third Movement: VALIANT ROSE Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun
The Cast sings the song
(in order of appearance)
Kozue Kaoru I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Corwin Ravenhair Take a bow for the new revolution
Utena Tenjou Smile and grin at the change all around
Benjamin D. Hutchins Pick up my guitar and play
Ruri Hoshino Just like yesterday
Imra Ardeen Then I'll get on my knees and pray
Wakaba Shinohara We don't get fooled again
Janice Barlow No no
Anthy Tenjou
Kaitlyn Hutchins I'll move myself and my family aside
Klaang tai-Kalaan If we happen to be left half alive
Juri Arisugawa I'll get out my papers and smile
Sergei at the sky
Joe Graf For I know that the hypnotized
Domina Kelley never lie
Jill McElwain
Erik Arnulfsson Yeah!
Amanda Elektra Dessler
Kitarina Telaia Dragonaar There's nothing in the street
Devlin Carter Looks any different to me
Dimitrios Makenikos Arbuthnot And the slogans are effaced by the bye
Roy Chernow And the party on the left
Mia Ausa Is now parting on the right
John Trussell And the beards have all grown longer
Jung Freud overnight
Carlos II of Argentina
General Eduardo Quevada I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Nanami Jinnai Take a bow for the new revolution
Meredith Wayne Smile and grin at the change all around
Jacques-Yves Aucoin Pick up my guitar and play
Francoise La Fontaine Just like yesterday
Martin Lucas Then I'll get on my knees and pray
Zach Stephens
Frank Williamson Yeah!
William M. Clark
Jules Marquette Meet the new boss
Clevon Endicott Same as the old boss
Marie Todd
William Harrison /* The Art of Noise "99 Red Balloons"
Colin Eadwards _Man, It's So Loud in Here_ */
Luornu Durgo
RADM Albert Calavicci, USN (Ret.) You and I in a little toy shop
R5-T1 Buy a bag of balloons with the
G-3N3 money we've got
R-06R Set them free at the break of dawn
Neal Krummell 'Til one by one, they were gone
Caddiel At the Dome, bugs in the software
Edwin Planck Flash the message, 'Something's out
Gordon Wendell there'
Jethan Floating in the summer sky
The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn IV Ninety-nine red balloons go by
R. Dorothy Wayneright
Elizabeth R'tas Shustal Ninety-nine red balloons
Alf Barmakian Floating in the summer sky
Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Panic bells, it's red alert
Kyouichi Saionji There's something here from somewhere
Jazmin Cullen else
Fredrika Bloggs The war machine it springs to life
Rokar Opens up one eager eye
Vikaris Focusing it on the sky
John Sheridan As ninety-nine red balloons go by
Alvin Parker
Ellis Carroway Ninety-nine Decision Street
Rupert Loyola Ninety-nine ministers meet
Ingrid Montano To worry worry super-scurry
Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV Call out the troops now in a hurry
Ein This is what we've waited for
Ordo Genreen This is it boys, this is war
Orihalcon The President is on the line
PCED Special Hunter Units 9313-9317 As ninety-nine red balloons go by
Roger Tremayne
Gudrun Truemace Ninety-nine knights of the air
Voltetius Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Gai "Guy" Morgan Every one's a super-hero
Hoshi Sato Every one's a Captain Kirk
Jean-Luc Picard With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
with Scramble in the summer sky
Earthforce As ninety-nine red balloons go by
IPO Tactical Division Earth
IPO Tactical Division Titan Neunundneunzig Kriegsminister
Titan Defense Forces Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Beltan M.P.D. Hielten sich fuer schalue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
and special guest stars Riefen: Krieg und wollten Macht
Matt Frewer Mann, wer haette das gedacht
as Edison Carter Dass es einmal soweit kommt
and Wegen neunundneinzig Luftballons
W. Morgan Shepherd Neunundneunzig Luftballons
as Blank Reg Ninety-nine red balloons go by!
oscillation overthruster Ninety-nine dreams I have had
Benjamin D. Hutchins And every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standing pretty
consulting engineer In this dust that was a city
Kris Overstreet If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
reverberator Here it is, a red balloon
John Trussell I think of you
And let it go...
spark
Anne Cross
scientist
Anne Springsteen
steering committee
The Usual Suspects
The Symphony will return
E P U (colour) 2002